Take Up and Read

I think we (as Christians) have unintentionally (albeit unconsciously) bought into one major assumption that forms the mind of our culture: the assumption that the Bible is a monotonous, boring uniformity and not a variegated, polyphonic, mesmerising, multi-textured wonder of Almighty God.

To my mind, there is a basic negative assumption that crops up in conversation after conversation. The assumption is basically this: the Bible is boring. Recently, this basic assumption or credo has cropped up in three varied forms:

1. The Bible is unreliable and boring. This assumption cropped up in a conversation I had very recently. The conversation veered around to the Book of Mormon (of all things) and I happened to mention its general and pervasive unreliability as an historical text. In response my friend insisted that the Bible is as full of inaccurate and skewed historical information as any other book. Who was I to say the Book of Mormon was inaccurate? The Bible is just as unreliable. And anyway, it’s much better to rely on what science can tell us, she went on, because only it can offer us an accurate account of the origins of the universe. I challenged her by mentioning a few more (proven) inconsistencies in the Mormon text book and then underlined the fact that science and Christian faith are not incompatible. Science in no way discredits Biblical truth, I insisted. She wasn’t convinced. But she didn’t argue with me. Instead, she simply insisted that the Bible is a boring book anyway, as if this was a crucial and decisive observation that somehow settled the debate. This uninformed assumption about the Bible seemed to be her trump-card, a kind of unassailably reasonable assertion that could not be contradicted. She was convinced that the Bible is boring and because the Bible is boring it is discredited and worse than useless. As far as she was concerned, this observation settled our short debate.

2. A second assumption that has cropped up over the past months in conversation is that the Bible is a barbarous and unenlightened book. Furthermore (you guessed it), it’s boring. An acquaintance of mine (who has probably read a minute portion of Scripture) is more or less convinced that the Bible presents only a grumpy, vindictive deity who is utterly passé in our present age of scientific sophistication. Basically the Bible is laughably out of touch with the way things really are but above all, it’s boring.

3. The third and last assumption I have encountered in recent conversation is the following: the Bible is a refuge for intellectually stunted evangelicals who can’t understand Jesus properly and can’t stomach any kind of thrilling literary and philosophical discourse whatsoever. Only fundamentalists accept the assertions of Scripture as true and trustworthy statements about God. Because Bible-believing Christians are generally hollow, intellectually anaemic and above all, boring creatures, they require a boring scripture with no unexpected turns and no shocking dénouement. The boring Bible is for boring Christians.

These are three instances which reflect different attitudes but underlying them all is that bastion of respectable, modern prejudice: the Bible is a boring book. Amongst the second-hand and blindly borrowed criticisms that the bible is scientifically outdated, presents a morally questionable deity and it is only read and believed by intellectually weak (and/or religiously intense) people, the assumption that the Bible is a boring book underlines them all.

The assumption that the Bible is a boring book is an old and time-worn prejudice. It’s crops up again and again. By way of response to an unbelieving culture at large, before we go about demonstrating the historical veracity of the Bible, its truthfulness, its perspicuity and general reliability, I think the first port of call is to disabuse people of this persistent (uninformed) prejudice that the Bible is a boring book.

In fact, before we even begin to mount all those minute and sophisticated arguments for the intellectual credibility of the Bible and the nature of the God it presents to us, we should instead make much of the lush, unexpected, oceanic, nuanced, layered, grotesque, sublime, symphonic, polyphonic, untidy, multi-genre, heaving library that is the Biblical narrative.

Before we press home the historical reliability and accuracy of Scripture, there has got to be a case for emphasising its mesmerising aesthetic quality, its literary richness and the accompanying undulations of plot; in other words, the epic and shocking beauty, the sheer polyphonic assault that is Scripture. We may thereby assist people in shedding that age-old (and it is getting old) myth of the monochrome Bible.

The Bible is not a monochrome book.

It’s more a glimmering polychrome with flashing lights.

It’s more Gothic than Romanesque.

It’s more a multi-textured, lumpy tapestry than minimalist steel.

Think bleary, loud Technicolor. Not black-and-white.

Call it anything but boring.

The Bible is not a boring book.

To those who will yet insist on capping off any conversation about the Bible with the insistence that it is boring, I can only respond with the chanted words which moved Saint Augustine to open the Bible for himself: tolle lege. Take up and read. Take up that rumbling, uncomfortably vast and heart-stoppingly dramatic Book and actually read it.

As you become ever more aware that the borrowed assumptions of the pundits and nay-sayers regarding the unreliability and/or barbarity of the Bible are wearing thin and you are about to flee into the bastion of comfortable and unexamined prejudice (“ah well, the Bible is a boring book anyway”), pick it up and actually read it first.

Yours,

The Scribbling Apprentice

N T wright: The Historical Resurrection of Jesus Christ

N T Wright on the compelling evidence for Jesus' bodily resurrection from the dead.

An evening with Scot McKnight

Last night, I had the pleasure of going to hear Scot McKnight speak at the Irish Bible Institute (http://www.irishbibleinstitute.org/index.php). Scot is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois) and is the author of more than thirty books, include Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us, The Story of the Christ, Praying with the Church, The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus and perhaps most famously, The Jesus Creed: Loving God & Loving Others.

You can view his blog here: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/bio-scot-mcknight.html

Scot's lecture was a spin-off from his most recent book entitled A Community Called Atonement. The main gist of his talk involved an exploration of atonement theory and the predominant interpretation of the atonement event that has shaped Western Evangelicalism; Penal Substitution. Simply stated, this atonement theory argues that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished (penalised) in the place of sinners (substitution), thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive the sins. It is, in a sense, the default theory underlining most gospel presentations evangelical Christians put forth. Certainly, it is the one we know best. It is the interpretation of the atonement which undergirds so much of our evangelistic material and personally, it is the interpretation of the atonement event which springs most rapidly to my mind whenever anyone asks me why Jesus died.

Scot argued that although Penal Substitution is a central image of atonement as it is presented in the New Testament, it is not the only image. Rather, it is one amongst a rich variety of others. Ultimately, we do the gospel a disservice if we major solely on penal substitution at the expense of drawing on the wealth of alternative images presented in Scripture and elucidated over the course of church history. As Scot observed, the event of the atonement is grounded in a mystery the human intellect cannot control. We do well to remember that each theory (or image) of the atonement touches on the glory of what God has done in Christ but no image can offer us an exhaustive understanding of what the death (and indeed, resurrection) of Christ has achieved for us.

Taking us into the recent history of atonement theory, Scot set the scene for the contemporary debate that has reemerged within evangelicalism over the recent decades. Leon Morris' Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (in response to Dodd), Packer's The Logic of Penal Substitution and Stott's The Cross of Christ have all proved massively influential in solidifying the evangelical emphasis on penal substitution. Taking us further into church history and the thinking of theologians east and west, Scot mapped out three of the major forms of atonement theory through the ages: 1. The Ransom Theory or Recapitulation Theory set forth by major Patristic theologians; 2. The Satisfaction Theory set forth by Anselm (which emphasised the need for a mediator who would be both God and human, thus being able to redeem humanity and satisfy God's nature and glory) and finally; 3. Penal Substitution Theory (propounded by Luther and Calvin). All three (and they are but three of of many) are encountered in the New Testament, but arguably the theories propounded by Calvin and Luther, and before them, Anselm, have become normative for evangelicalism's understanding of the atonement event.

Because Penal Substitution is the thorough-going interpretation of the atonement current in contemporary evangelicalism, it is rare to hear it preached any other way. For example, rarely do we hear the atonement preached as liberation. Option 3 (Penal Substitution as understood by Luther/Calvin) is not the only option. Granted it is one image of the atonement - and perhaps the singularly major one at that. However, it is not the only one. A game of golf is played best with a sack-full of clubs, rather than just the one. Varied kinds of clubs are needed to pitch the ball from all kinds of locations on the green. The same applies to atonement theory: when we rely on only one, we are at an immediate disadvantage - we lose out on the variety and richness of alternative theories that may apply in contexts ill-fitted to the proclaimation of Penal Substitution (for example, as we seek to minister to someone recovering from abuse or someone who is despairing of their personal drug addiction). Because the New Testament doesn't force the atonement through the lens of one theory, we shouldn't do it either.

This, in short compass, was what Scot argued for last night. His lecture was punctuated with conversational chat, wit and some arresting illustrations (like the golf one above). All in all, it was a cracking evening of illuminating discussion. I'll write up another brief post later covering some other interesting things he said.

Yours,

The Scribbling Apprentice.

"Beyond Consolation": vital apologetics from John Waters III

This post continues is third part of a series of posts reviewing John Water's book, Beyond Consolation.


It would appear, at first glance, that the unfettered ‘rationality’ that disposes of God and mocks at trusting faith is true enlightenment. Our emancipation from the shackles of believing faith is liberation. After all, isn’t religion always something imposed by authority and tradition? Certainly, as Waters writes, that is the assumption of our secular/agnostic age. Religion moulds, distorts and brainwashes; it is an inherited manacle that ought to be dispensed with. As such, enlightenment and liberation is construed as the ‘rational’ disposal and rejection of religion, that which formerly imposed a benighted ignorance upon us. Religion, especially Christianity, is therefore often caricatured as being intellectually naïve, a belief that rests on no solid evidence; pure fideism and credulity. However, as Waters points out:

“…my religious belief is my very being, my relationship with the entire order of reality. I am connected to everything that ever was and ever will be. I am alive in infinite time and space, which eventually converge in what cosmology calls space-time. This incomprehensible reality is what keeps me alive, keeps me connected, keeps me charged with the human appetites – for hope, beauty, truth, justice, happiness, love, good – for what is called God. This condition pre-exists me. I cannot shake it off. I can deny it, but that won’t change my fundamental structure in nature, which is dependant, which is created, which is charged with a unique destiny, and which is fundamentally mysterious, perhaps most of all to myself” (pp.32)

Fundamentally, as Waters writes, we are contingent, dependant creatures. We are irrevocably shaped by three undeniable truths; we are created (brought into being by a Cause outside of ourselves), dependant (at any given moment we are utterly dependant for our existence on a multitude of factors we are largely unconscious of; molecular and chemical mechanisms, the physical laws that govern reality and so on) and mortal (everyone of us will die; we are transient beings who will pass out of existence.) Religious faith recognises these inviolable truths and it provides us with the vocabulary to effectively articulate and understand them. Our condition of dependency and connectedness to all things pre-exists us, so to speak. We cannot shake it off or liberate ourselves into independence and autonomy. No matter how technologically advanced or ‘liberated’ or ‘rational’ we become, we remain created, dependant, mortal creatures.

We cripple ourselves when we jettison the language of religious faith, for only it can properly understand the human condition in all its frailty and mystery. It connects us to a reality in a way that the straitened, limited, narrow vocabulary of clinical ‘rationality’ never can. Waters notes:

“…It is as if the words to hope with have been stolen from under our noses. There are other things you could say: that we have lost some or all of our faith, or innocence, or gullibility; that we have freed ourselves from the tyranny of imposed superstition; that we are more realistic than our ancestors were. But you also have to conclude that we have become more limited…that our capacity to think of ourselves and our total relationships with time and space has been reduced to ways that render us less happy, less peaceful and oddly enough or perhaps not, less free” (pp.37)

As we pick apart the fabric of Christian faith we have inherited we do not realise that we throttle something vital to our humanity. In the wake of the loss of something so vital, we are left with an alternative account of reality that sources our freedom and significance solely in the material world. As a result, our sense of personal significance, worth and purpose is supplanted from the realm of our relationship to the eternal God. No longer are we defined by what Martin Buber called the “I-Thou” relationship, the transcendent, interpersonal union between man and God. Rather, we become increasingly defined by “I-it” relationships. Having jettisoned a vision of reality that sees all things as charged with the grandeur and presence of the unseen God, we are left with a vision of reality that views matter and chance as the base ground of all things. As such, there is no “Thou” who sustains all things; nothing can mediate the presence and glory of God to us anymore.

What we engage with, then, on a day-to-day base, is purely material. On the basis of a purely scientistic, materialist account of reality even the individual human being is the sum of matter-plus-energy-plus-chance. Of course, we cannot live with such an inadequate view of the human being. We remain haunted by a sense of our own personal significance and worth. Now, the devotion and communion that was reserved at one time for the eternal infinite God is channelled toward ideals (generally the secular, liberal ideal of tolerance) or perhaps, scientific methodology and theory and so on. An ideal or theory is an “it” and so fundamentally cannot slake our profound thirst for communion with a personal and ultimate God who is a “Thou”. As such, in the wake of the “death of God” we are inclined to imbue secular ideals with characteristics that belong only to a personal being. The loss of a religious vocabulary that formerly framed our day-day reality in the context of the infinite and the eternal is a loss that ultimately corrodes and impoverishes our concept of the human being. A culture based on a purely materialist account of reality no longer affords us a way of seeing ourselves as we really are.

Waters suggest that contemporary social discourse is underpinned by a subtle pincer movement that often goes unidentified:

“…Religion, the means by which we once achieved a semantic accommodation with total reality, has been discredited, by a pincer movement between the reductions and abuses perpetrated in the name of religion and the opposing reaction from outside. One side claims the franchise on redemption, the other victory over unreason; but the vast bulk of modern populations are, as a consequence, left unable to claim either. Stripped of their language of absolute reality, our cultures begin to squeeze and oppress us in ways we are incapable of perceiving. What we have lost has been a loss to ourselves, to our essential humanity, and yet we have been persuaded to read it as a liberation…Because we have created for ourselves a culture that in so many ways denies our humanity, we have, each one of us separately, become trapped in a terrifying avoidance of the most unavoidable fact of life: that death is certain…A culture that denies this reality is, to say the least, unkind to those who inhabit it” (pp. 40)

We live in a culture that has unmoored itself from a vision of reality that could accommodate and neutralise the terrifying fact of death: the terminus of all life, the event that signals the swift end of all that we cherish. Death spells despair for a vision of reality that insists that human significance is rooted solely in the material world. Even the atheist feels the keen pinch of nostalgia for a vision of reality that assures the human soul that death has not got the last word. After a debate in UCC with the well-know atheist thinker Peter Atkins, Waters writes:

“As we walked across the campus afterwards, I jokingly said to him that it was somewhat ironic, given his vehemence in the argument, that of the two of us, I alone had a chance of being vindicated. He asked me what I meant. I said, ‘If you’re right, neither of us will ever know, whereas if I’m right, we’ll both know.’ He laughed, fell silent for a moment and responded: ‘It’s much worse than that, I’m afraid, because if you’re right, I’m going to be very happy!’" (pp. 113)

And yet, the insistence remains; our secular/agnostic mindset convinces us that life beyond death is a myth to be debunked at all costs. Tune in to the next post to see how Waters demonstrates that, in fact, the atheistic concept of extinction at death and the prospect of a waiting nothingness beyond death are wholly illogical. Despite their intrinsic irrationality, such beliefs are touted as unquestionable orthodoxy and the epitome of good sense, the ‘rational’ alternative to a naïve belief in everlasting life.

Sincerely,

The Scribbling Apprentice

A Brief Rejoinder

By the by – I am in no way anti-science. By no means. Below I am simply arguing that science collapses when it is weighted with the burden of answering the fundamental questions of human existence. When natural science is rallied upon to answer the fundamental questions (“Who am I”, “Is there a God?”) it fails to satisfy. That is all.

Until next time –

The Scribbling Apprentice

“Beyond Consolation”: vital apologetics from John Waters II

John Waters writes on pp. 31 of Beyond Consolation:

“The cultures of present-day societies appear to construct themselves or be constructed so as to avoid contemplation of the great questions. This is certainly the case with Irish society. In our public square today there seems to be more open discussion than ever about how reality is structured, where human beings came from and why we are here. But this discussion exists almost entirely on the level of abstraction, removed from the fundamental reality of the individual human being…There is much talk about evolution and the fact that we know, up to a point, how mankind developed from an uncertain moment of initiation. But most of us have no more than a crude grasp of this story…Behind the easily trotted out ‘rational’ assumptions are the ineffable mysteries: where the first spark of life came from; where there might be a ‘come from’; what happened in the aeons of time before everything we know about?”

I think John Waters puts his finger on a significant current of contemporary thought in the passage above. It appears that today, generally speaking, people will appeal to a seemingly ‘rational’ account of human nature – our significance, origins and destination is thought to be accounted for in the abstract language of what might be called ‘science’. On closer examination, what appears to be a forthrightly and rigorously ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ account of human nature and significance is seen to be anything but. Under-girding scientific discourse of any kind whatsoever is an array of fundamental beliefs that are in no way rational in the sense so many people assume (that is, many assertions about reality deemed to be ‘scientific’ rest on beliefs about reality that cannot be empirically proven – see Refuting Scientism post below.) In a sense then, what is deemed to be true, proper and enlightened ‘rationality’ is nothing of the sort; rather it is an agglomeration of unexamined presuppositions that have the appearance of rationality.

This is precisely what John Water’s driving at when he states:

“...in our public square today there seems to be more open discussion than ever about how reality is structured, where human beings came from and why we are here. But this discussion exists almost entirely on the level of abstraction… Behind the easily trotted out ‘rational’ assumptions are the ineffable mysteries: where the first spark of life came from; where there might be a ‘come from’; what happened in the aeons of time before everything we know about?”

So much of the current-day story of origins is built, as John Waters says, on a crude (often second-hand, lazily borrowed) account of biological evolution. Although the public sphere is rife with scientific debate and press-releases disclosing recent discoveries and breakthroughs, no part of contemporary scientific discourse comes close to setting its finger on “the ineffable mysteries”; the elements of reality that simple cannot be grasped by a system of thought built purely on the premises of natural science – a system of thought limited to the description and classification of natural, physical phenomena. Ultimately, natural science cannot hope to answer the baffling question of human origins and significance.

What we do have, then, is a form of discourse that pushes around a ‘scientific’ language of ever-growing complexity, which seemingly addresses the question of our origins and significance, yet leaves us strangely unmoved. Indeed, as I’ll try to show in the next post, not only does a purely ‘scientific’, ‘rational’ (in the false sense) account of reality fail to satisfy the lingering question of human significance, it also leaves us with a greatly impoverished account of reality – in every sense. Not only (and especially) intellectually, but also spiritually and artistically.

What, then, is the alternative? If ‘science’ so-called cannot furnish us with intellectually, existentially, spiritually and emotionally satisfying answers to the riddle of human existence, beauty, death and The Ultimate, what can?

To furnish a proper answer to this question, I must begin a new post – and unfortunately, due to time constraints, I cannot do that now. So, to see where Waters takes us for the uncovering of a viable alternative, tune into the next post -

Until then,

Sincerely,

The Scribbling Apprentice.

"Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul." - Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace