Good Advice from Aquinas on the Bible

I'm in a phase of sporadic blogging again, mostly due to the facts that I'm teaching a three-week course that meets every day for three hours and that I'm working on the manuscript for the Science and Christianity text I have to have finished in a year or so.  In my research for the latter, I came across some words from Thomas Aquinas that I wish today's Christians would take to heart.  He was discussing how to interpret the Bible when it is obvious that the worldview of the original writers and audience is different than our own.  He gives two points, which he believes to be consistent with what Augustine taught:

First, the truth of Scripture must be held inviolable.  Secondly, when there are different ways of explaining a Scriptural text, no particular explanation should be held so rigidly that, if convincing arguments show it to be false, anyone dare to insist that it is still the definitive sense of the text.  Otherwise, unbelievers will scorn Sacred Scripture, and the way to faith will be closed to them (Summa Theologica, Vol. 10:71-73 of the Blackfriars 1967 edition).

Whether we're talking about the age of the earth, the methods God used to create, or the historicity of Adam of Eve, there is no doubt that there are different ways of explaining the text.  So, following Thomas's advice, let's not hold to a particular explanation so rigidly that when convincing arguments come (and they will probably come) that the way of faith will be closed to people today.  I've seen this too often lately.  People who have said, "If this is what Scripture says, then obviously it is a bunch of a hooey."

Back to writing.

We should all mean what Olson means when he says the Bible is trustworthy

The frequent readers of this blog (yes, both of them) may have noticed the list of blogs that I skim through.  One of those is by Roger Olson, a theologian teaching at Baylor University.  I find him to be generally sane and often insightful.  Given my own thinking about the nature of Scripture recently (for example, here and here), the title of his post today caught my eye, "What I mean when I say the Bible is trustworthy."

I commend it to you.  You can read it here.

I especially appreciate the honesty when he says,

Even most conservative evangelical biblical scholars know [that not everything in the Bible happened exactly the way it is described], but they keep it a secret (except among themselves). They don’t want to share it with the lay people who look to them for fundamentalist support. If they really told their constituents what they know to be true about the Bible, they would be crucified by many of them. So they preach inerrancy, but among themselves and in their footnotes admit that the Bible contains many “problems” that resist harmonization.

I suppose I might be guilty of this myself from time to time.  When teaching, say, a Sunday School class I might dig a little deeper into the problems with reading the Bible as a giant fact book.  But even then, it takes more time to unpack some of the issues and many people are just looking for the sound byte that answers the questions quickly and definitively.  And we don't want them to get the wrong idea, so we perpetuate the sound byte thinking that pervades popular thinking in our country.  We need to do better.

There's a great Emily Dickinson poem in this regard:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm
Delight The Truth's superb surprise 

 As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant."  I take it that she means there is a way to frame or nuance language such that it conveys the intended meaning in ways that can be understood by the audience--though perhaps that language can't be pressed too far in a simplistic literal sense.  That's often what we do with young children.  Perhaps it's not too much of a stretch to think God has done that with us.

More Messiness with the Bible

Last week's post generated more comments (on the Facebook edition) than anything I've had to say in awhile.  The overwhelming majority of those comments were positive, as though I was saying out loud some things that many people have been thinking.  But of course there is some danger or risk in what I said, and this was voiced by a FB friend of mine who shares a set of grandparents with me.  His concern was that by admitting that we don't take ALL of what the Bible says at face value, this opens the door to picking and choosing what we want to submit to.  So the trick is to make sure that we're accepting the right bits and ignoring the wrong ones.  The problem is, there's not an asterisk in the text next to the verse numbers that apply in their plain, literal sense to everyone and some other mark next to the verses that are metaphorical or applicable only to the original audience.  And since the Protestant Reformation, we inheritors of the doctrine of sola scriptura have disallowed the church to be the authoritative interpreter.  So to many (especially those on the outside looking in), it does appear that different traditions do in fact "pick and choose" which bits to follow and which to ignore.  I think it is more complex than that and that distinct traditions (often denominational, but not exclusively so these days) guide us into interpretations that are package deals.  But there's no getting around the fact our interpretations are significantly influenced by extra-biblical considerations.

For example, my cousin cites Ephesians 5 as one of the absolute and non-negotiable passages.  He wasn't specific, so it is possible that he means v. 4 about there being no foolish talk or coarse joking; or perhaps v. 18 about not getting drunk on wine; or maybe it was v. 19 where we find an injunction to speak to each other in songs.  I'm guessing, though, that he intended to refer to the passage about wives submitting to husbands, as though this clearly speaks to a universal familial structure that should be adhered to in all times and places.  But I'm afraid that such a conclusion is only possible by doing some considerable "picking and choosing".

For instance, the hermeneutical approach needed to arrive at such a conclusion should equally apply to uphold the institution of slavery since later in that passage Paul clearly gives instructions to slaves and masters.  On what basis do we decide that male headship is universal but slavery is not?  It must be on the basis of something other than this passage.  Of course there are other passages that speak to the distinct roles of the sexes, but I'd suggest these are often selectively interpreted too.  I've belonged to two different churches who restricted leadership positions to males by citing 1 Timothy 3, where it says that an overseer (or elder) should be the husband of one wife.  That pretty clearly implies that the overseers must be men.  But neither of these churches went on take the other clear implications of the passage.  They didn't require that the elders were married, for example.  And they didn't require that the elders had fathered more than one child, even though verse four clearly refers to his children.

Now, I haven't said anything here from which you could infer that I disagree with the Driscollian position on men and women (perhaps I'll say such things in a later post).  All I'm saying here is that it is messier and full of interpretive decisions to come to that conclusion than merely pointing to a chapter and verse and saying that the Bible clearly says this.

May God give all of us wisdom and humility as we do our best to live faithfully according to the Word.

It's not that Simple (sorry)

In my Logic and Critical Thinking class this semester, we are using the topic of creation and evolution.  It's the first time I've used this, and there seems to be more intrinsic interest from the students than topics I've used in the past (like illegal immigration or global warming).  I suppose that part of the reason for this is that it is supposed that the Bible has more to say on this topic.  I wonder if that's really true, though?  I'll perhaps come back to that question in another speech.

Today's speech, instead, is more about interpreting the Bible in general.  I think we who teach impressionable young minds have to be careful doing this, but I'm convinced that for the long-term benefit of Christians (and thereby for the Kingdom of God) we need to expose the selective and non-literal reading of the Bible that all of us engage in.  What I mean is this: It's hugely common and holy sounding (and not without value) for us Christians who are thinking about some topic (perhaps evolution, global warming, or illegal immigration) to appeal to a Bible verse in support of our conclusion.  What we've seen in Critical Thinking class is that the implicit logical form of such an argument is:

Premise 1:  The Bible says X
Premise 2:  Whatever the Bible says, we should accept (or depending on the passage, "Whatever the Bible says we should obey").
Conclusion:  Therefore, we should accept (or obey) X

The problem is that premise 2 needs massive qualification and all sorts of ad hoc fiddling with in order to accept.  For example, not many of us accept or obey Deuteronomy 21:18-21 which clearly tells parents to take their rebellious sons to the elders outside of the city gates and have them stoned to death.  Instead, we "interpret" the verse to be not applicable to us today.  Usually we say something like, "That was part of the old covenant."  But then, of course, so are the ten commandments.  Are these not applicable to us today?  Furthermore, Jesus claimed that he did not come to abolish the law, and that not one letter shall be omitted from the law until heaven and earth pass away.  By most counts, heaven and earth have not yet passed away.

It doesn't get much easier if we confine ourselves to a straight or literal reading of the New Testament.  Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus famously tells us to pluck out an eye if it causes us to sin.  The other day my son and I were following a pickup truck with Luke 22:36 bumper stickered in its back window next to the gun rack.  Not knowing that reference by heart, Trevor looked it up on his phone and laughed pretty hard as he read Jesus saying, "The one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one."  Then of course we could refer to the verses on women, or my favorite:  Greet one another with a kiss (which is given in at least four places in the New Testament).  We could give a much longer list of things the Bible pretty clearly says that most of us don't accept or obey.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we can't use the Bible to help us know what to believe or how to act.  What I'm suggesting (actually, I'm engaging in something stronger than suggestion here), is that it's not quite so easy to open your Bible and point to chapter and verse in order to prove your favorite theory.

I don't think that we should be stoning our sons, plucking out our eyes, or kissing everyone we meet.  I believe that there are legitimate interpretations of these verses that show they need not be taken literally by us today.  But in closing, a couple of things about interpretations:  1)  It's a lot of hard work to arrive at interpretations that are faithful to the text, to the cultural context, and to our situation today.  I believe that anyone can pick up the Bible and read it profitably; but there needs to be people who devote their lives to studying the Bible, learning the original languages, and learning everything they can about the cultures in which the books were written.  And we need to trust them--though not blindly so, which leads to 2)  Interpretations are not infallible.  If they were, we'd have a big problem on our hands when we recognize that there are gobs of interpretations that are contradictory (just for starters, think about eschatology or eternal security).

I believe that the Bible is inspired and authoritative.  And I also believe that it under-determines most of the doctrines that we derive from it.  That's not to say that those doctrines are wrong, just that it is not quite so simple as saying that the Bible says it.  This is a call to thinking Christians everywhere not to perpetuate simplistic (and often bone-headed) uses of the Bible.  Seriously.  Please.

Adam and Eve

I let my subscription to Christianity Today run out several months ago.  I wasn't happy that they seemed to interpret traditional orthodox Christianity as falling within very narrow parameters.  But it appears they've done something interesting this month.

I'd like to see what they said about Adam and Eve in the cover story.  Anyone read it and have reactions?  A thoughtful piece about it is here.

This is a topic from which we cannot run and hide.  And we can't answer the question merely by repeating the formulations of previous generations of orthodox Christians.  Maybe they were right, but like every generation, we've got work out the data of revelation in our context.

The evidence for early hominids is overwhelming now.  How do we fit this into our theology?  Of course it comes down to our biblical hermeneutic.  Do we think the Bible is a big book of propositions dropped from the sky?  Or is it the faithful (and authoritative) witness of communities with whom God interacted in a special way?  (I forget the name of the informal fallacy I just committed by making one of the options sound ridiculous.)  What difference does that make for interpreting it?  A pretty big one, I think.