I'm intrigued by a particular episcopal priest named John Shelby Spong. He is a liberal believer. I read his article entitled "Resurrection - Myth or Reality." Here is a quote: "[Church] leaders seem not to recognize that, as modern history has unfolded, the Bible has proven to be wrong many times. People sometimes gasp when they hear that said out loud and in public. The notion of wrongness and the Bible are not normally linked in print, because the church has lived with the illusion of biblical inerrancy for so long."
You can read it here. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
9 comments:
Here's my off-the-cuff first reactions to some of what he says.
"Yet the Bible was wrong in 1215 when it was used to oppose the Magna Carta and to uphold the divine right of kings."
The Bible was wrong? Or were biblical expositors?
"The Bible was wrong in the 17th century when it was quoted to attack Galileo's vision of the earth turning on its axis as it moved around the sun."
The Bible was wrong? Or were biblical expositors? Of course Galileo remained a faithful Christian his whole life. And the older Ptolemaic system was still better able, mathematically speaking, to predict and account for the motion of the heavenly bodies. Calvin famously said that if you want to learn about the motion of planets, study astronomy. And apparently Copernicus got published at Wittenberg with either Luther or Melanchthon's permission.
"The Bible was wrong in the 19th century when it ridiculed Darwin in the name of the literal accuracy of the seven-day creation story found in Genesis."
The bible ridiculed people? Never mind the fact that B.B. Warfield, an early leader in the fundamentalist movement and an inerrantist, was willing and ready to incorporate evolution into Christian theology - over a 100 years ago! And never mind Augustine's discussion of Genesis. Any student of history knows that, in Augustine's time, the doctrine of creation sounded just as weird, or even weirder, than it does to people today.
"The Bible was wrong when it assumed that sickness was the punishment for sinfulness or that the weather patterns were the means of God's judgment."
What exactly does Spong think the bible teaches on this matter?
"The Bible was wrong when its words were used to justify slavery, to undergird segregation and apartheid, and to keep women in second-class status."
The Bible was wrong? Or were biblical expositors? Does he really think that if you take the bible "literally" it justifies the slave trade and apartheid? This is an invitation to a lively discussion on hermeneutics. But it is not as if this discussion is irrational. Really smart folks spend a lot of time on this.
"It is wrong today when it is quoted to oppress gay and lesbian people."
The Bible is wrong? Or are biblical expositors? A lot depends on what you mean by 'oppress' and 'gay', etc.
"they should remember this history and face the possibility that the Bible might also be wrong about the literal details of Easter."
Broadly speaking, yes, this should be considered - at least by Christians who have the time, resources, and the expertise to do this. Not all will be able to. Spong should be aware that many have set themselves out to do just this.
"We need to remember first that the Easter experience occurred around 30 C.E., while the gospel stories about that experience were not written until sometime between the years 70 and 100 C.E."
The funny thing about this is that less than a hundred years ago, it was broadly assumed that the sober results of critical scholarship were that the NT was written even as late as the 4th century by freakin' drunken monks!!! Ha. Needless to say, the general trend in scholarship is 'conservative'.
"Before we can begin positive speculation about the meaning of Easter, we must clear the debris of literalism and the fanciful claims of pre-modern people."
Spong proceeds to makes assertions without evidence or argument. Maybe that is appropriate for such a small popular level article. But it is still worth noting that he offers no evidence or arguments. He should be aware that people like N.T. Wright and Richard Bauckham have presented very detailed and nuanced cases for what he dismisses so quickly. It is not as if "pre-modern" people found resurrection really easy to swallow. That's a complete myth. It is not as if the resurrection is supposed to be "easy". It is supposed to be strange!
Interesting thoughts. I guess I can see where is he coming from, and I understand that a lot of what he attributes to 'the Bible' are actually how people interpret the Bible, but I guess that's the whole point.
Take slavery...from a biblical perspective it was simply taken for granted. There were no negative commands regarding it (ie, don't do it - it's bad), which makes one assume that the writers of scripture merely assumed it was just something that 'happened, happens, and will always happen'. Modern minds see things differently, and so our 'exposition' of scripture must also change.
Condoning slavery, or the subjugation of women seemed perfectly reasonable for biblical expositors of the day. Indeed, if you read scripture 'at face value' it seems very much that Paul was not too fond of women, and depending on how you should take 'The Word of God', women should simply not teach, should 'submit' to head of their lives, are more responsible for original sin then men, and need to cover their heads. I guess Spong would argue we simply put our modern ethics onto the Bible. In order to make some of the more bizarre and awful passages of scripture fit with modern 'decency'we have to run around, creatively expositing in order to make it fit into our current cultural climate.
I guess many Christians are happy to let the experts do their exposition for them, which is fine. However, I suppose Spong and other critics of scripture would ultimately ask the question: "Why did God give us a handbook that requires a PhD to properly understand?"
I don't know, just thoughts.
"Take slavery...from a biblical perspective it was simply taken for granted. There were no negative commands regarding it (ie, don't do it - it's bad), which makes one assume that the writers of scripture merely assumed it was just something that 'happened, happens, and will always happen'."
I'd say it is somewhat anachronistic to equate the modern slave trade with 'biblical slavery'. And the broader Christian tradition of exegesis lead to the virtual end of the institution of slavery in Christendom. You'd probably need to qualify that a bit. Under certain ways of thinking, we are still slaves today - but we're 'wage-slaves'. And was the fuedal system slavery? Somewhat. But if you aren't stricty agrarian, or don't enjoy the benefits of the division of labour and labour markets, something very close to slavery is inevitable. Not the slave trade - but systems of authority that are pretty darn close to slavery. But I think it is fairly clear that it wasn't 'modern ethics' which lead bible expositors to conclude that the capturing, trading, and owning of human beings is wicked. That's a matter of history to be empirically verified though.
"Indeed, if you read scripture 'at face value' it seems very much that Paul was not too fond of women, and depending on how you should take 'The Word of God', women should simply not teach, should 'submit' to head of their lives, are more responsible for original sin then men, and need to cover their heads."
This is the right kind of stuff to be talking about. I'll say this much for now: being hard core about taking all of the bible very seriously does NOT mean isolating single verses, deciding what you happen to think is the 'literal' meaning, and then doing/believing whatever it says. That is not the right way to use the bible. And to think this way is not to 'become soft on the bible'.
"I guess Spong would argue we simply put our modern ethics onto the Bible"
That is almost certainly true, and probably good. You'd have to address this stuff issue by issue and with careful thought and reflection. A whole lot of qualifications need to be made and distinctions drawn. For one, I'd say it is worth noting that much/most (?) of our modern ethics comes out of the bible, or from the broader tradition of biblical exegesis and Christian ethical reflection.
"However, I suppose Spong and other critics of scripture would ultimately ask the question: "Why did God give us a handbook that requires a PhD to properly understand?""
For one, so long as we keep treating the bible as 'a handbook' we aren't Christians. Ok. That's a little harsh... but I still think its true. So long as we believe what Jesus had to say about the bible, we won't treat it as a 'handbook' full of tips for living and being a good person. It is not chiefly about ethics or 'moral information'.
I'd say it probably takes a Christian PhD to fully enter into, and fruitful interact with, the scholarly work of an atheist/agnostic PhD. The time and resources it would take, regardless of other considerations, make this necessary.
But I totally agree with you that we ought to be sympathetic with Spong's concerns. Average-joe North American will likely read Spong and think, "Ya. That Christian stuff sounds superstitious. We can't believe that stuff anymore, can we?" And surely it is right to be worried about superstitiousness and the way religion has been used in the past by various kinds of 'anti-christs'.
It doesn't take a PhD to understand the bible. A PhD is simply an certification that you have spent a lot of time looking into something.
If a person spends a lot of time learning and reading and doesn't have a PhD they will probably be able to understand it better as well.
I think the idea was that the handbook requires a lifetime of learning and you could probably reference the Bible in that it says somewhere they you should read it every day or some such. That could be extended to mean that you should be reading and learning about it everyday
And for the record, I don't :o)
In regards to the article based on the title I was expecting him to actually sight the Bible and then say this didn't happen.
Instead what he did was say that historically when the Bible was interpreted/used in a certain way it was wrong.
So the article title is misleading.
He gave us nothing to say that the actual text of the Bible is wrong.
One of the problems with the Bible is that it was written 2000+ years ago to a different culture.
A lot of the references in it we don't get or don't translate to English in the same fashion.
Yet even still in some way a lot of people understand concepts etc taught.
Give me a call sometime and we can grab a coffee and discuss.
Hey Ed and YT, I'm liking this conversation:
Ed You said, regarding women in the Bible: "I'll say this much for now: being hard core about taking all of the bible very seriously does NOT mean isolating single verses, deciding what you happen to think is the 'literal' meaning, and then doing/believing whatever it says. That is not the right way to use the bible. And to think this way is not to 'become soft on the bible'."
I completely agree. However, if we take the wider context of scripture (and maybe i'm misunderstanding you here), women are given a second-class status throughout both old and new Testaments. I think the critics arguments says that average joe reads the bible, and is encouraged to read the bible like a book, and won't be doing serious contextual, historical checks on things, and therefore has no choice but to conclude that women are second rate humans. Indeed, many/[most?] Christians DO think this way. I could textually give you all the reasons why the Bible DOESN'T say that, but it would take a whole book of 'explaining' away the face value of a hundred passages, which leads me to the same argument as I posed before, stated differently:
If God inspired scripture through the Holy Spirit, oversaw the writing, copying, translating, choosing of books and indeed even the reading of scripture today, why is it so EASY to misinterpret?
I think it is easy to argue the idea that modern, extra-biblical ethics (ie, the equality of the sexes) are imposed on scripture. After all, it took us 1960ish years to come to the realization that we God doesn't condone the abuse and subjugation of women! And then only after women themselves stood up and demanded it!
"women are given a second-class status throughout both old and new Testaments"
Now the key moral questions for us are: How should we think about women? What attitudes should we take towards women?
Being a biblical inerrantist doesn't require that your answer be: "I should think of women just as the ancient Hebrews did, and/or just as 2nd temple Jews did, or in the precise way Paul did.
As a side point, I say that it might actually be true that women were/are the 'weaker sex'. Generally speaking they tend to have less muscle mass. (If your life is a brutal fight for survival, with danger and strife at ever turn, this matters a lot.) And, as a female philosophy prof recently admitted, it is not insane to think that men tend to be more logical, while women tend to be more empathetic. Heck, even some feminists argue for this - but they see it as a strength of women. I guess I'd say its a strength as well. The point is that if you think being logical is greater than being empathetic (as Aristotle did), then you might think men are greater in just this respect. I guess we don't think this way anymore, and I guess this is probably for the best.
I think the prosperity and relative peace which our modern society has provided for us makes all of this obsolete. I'm not sure we are much more morally enlightened about women than ancient people. Ancient life was brutal. Our life is far less so. We have the luxury of treating women as full and equal to men. All things being equal, women should have been treated this way all along.
"After all, it took us 1960ish years to come to the realization that we God doesn't condone the abuse and subjugation of women!"
I'd say that our modern prosperity frees us to do what we ought to have done all along. And it's not clear that Christians traditionally thought women should be abused!
Hard patriarchy is all but dead. It is a laughed at by everyone but the crazies. Soft patriarchy (fathers are somehow responsible for their families and to serve and sacrifice themselves for their wives) is still a live option.
I'm an egalitarian in terms of law - men and women are equal before the law. I'm not an egalitarian in every possible sense though. Generally speaking, women are different from men in certain respects. Now general truths (which always have exceptions) shouldn't be used to squash opportunities for woman. When it comes to fighting fires, generally speaking (because of greater muscle mass) men are better than woman. But not without exception. Exceptional women ought have an equal opportunity to try out for the fire department. If they meet the general standards, then great. The fact that, in general, less women will meet these standards (or even want to meet them) does not mean women are being unjustly discriminated against. The discrimination will be on the basis of strength, not gender.
"Now the key moral questions for us are: How should we think about women? What attitudes should we take towards women?
Being a biblical inerrantist doesn't require that your answer be: "I should think of women just as the ancient Hebrews did, and/or just as 2nd temple Jews did, or in the precise way Paul did."
So would you say then that the Bible is still inerrant, but that the writers of the Bible were wrong about their attitudes about women? Or that their thoughts about women were good, for them?
I may be wrong, but I think this is exactly Spong's point. The Bible was written in a brutal age. It says things that to us, are just plain wrong, and even wrong to our 'objective moral' knowledge.
I say inerrantism, rightly understood (or as I understand it), doesn't require that all the 'thought content' of the original author was flawless.
Suppose that Moses thought the planets rotated around the earth. Is this an error? Well, I say it is a perfectly accurate description of the planets as they appear to a person walking the face of the earth. And in a certain sense, given that any description of motion is relative to a particular frame of reference, it wasn't an 'error'. It is not clear to me that we're even able to imagine what it was really like for Moses when he looked up into the sky and had thoughts about the stars and planets.
In any case, inerrantism doesn't require that we think the exact 'thought content' as Moses.
What it does require, is that when rightly interpreted (canonically, Christocentrically), it doesn't lead us astray. And if it seems that there's a conflict between what we know and what the bible seems to be teaching us, either our interpretation of the bible is wrong, or our knowledge is wrong. It may be that we can't resolve the apparent contradictions for very long stretches of time. That's ok.
I think Spong has in mind a kind of simplistic, dispensational style, southern bible-belt, woodenly literalistic kinda treatment of the bible. There are better doctrines of inerrancy to be found.
love your debat guys :)
making me do some thinking
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