{"id":972,"date":"2012-03-29T19:41:56","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T00:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=972"},"modified":"2012-03-29T19:41:56","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T00:41:56","slug":"why-christians-love-the-bible-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/why-christians-love-the-bible-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Christians Love the Bible (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of a prior post on the Bible and what it does and does not say.\u00a0 The series will continue next time as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To respond to the claim that the Bible is immoral, a claim often made in our current world,\u00a0 it makes sense to try to unravel several distinct charges that can be made against the Bible on moral grounds:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The authors claim that God favors some people over others, while also arguing that \u201cGod is no respecter of persons\u201d;<\/li>\n
  2. They attribute to God behaviors, attitudes, and values that in a human being would be considered highly unworthy or immoral;<\/li>\n
  3. They advocate, or at least defend, violence against vulnerable people, most notably the Canaanites, but also others; and<\/li>\n
  4. They turn a blind eye toward slavery and the mistreatment of women.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    All of these would be serious charges if true.\u00a0 A demonstration of them would reduce the Bible to a heap of nationalistic texts more worthy of Fox News than of a great religion.\u00a0 The fact that some Christians attempt to defend imperialism, warfare, racial or economic discrimination, and other horrendous practices in the name of the Bible certainly makes the task of defending it harder.\u00a0 Still, I will try to understand it, in part by rescuing it from some of its self-appointed defenders and in part by showing that many of the charges against have little or no basis in fact.<\/p>\n

    To take the first charge first, it is very important to understand what the Bible actually says about the election of Israel.\u00a0 Hate-groups on both the left and right of the political spectrum have often used the biblical notion of election to brand Jews as arrogant or dishonest.\u00a0 At many historical points, the attack on election has linked directly to persecution.\u00a0 It is thus highly surprising that some enlightened secular critics of Christianity on the political left should employ such simplistic understandings of biblical teaching.\u00a0 In the Bible, election does not imply some sort of special treatment.\u00a0 It implies higher standards of justice and peace.\u00a0 Nor is election an end in itself, for as the single most important text on the subject, Genesis 12 puts it, \u201cin you shall all the nations of the world be blessed.\u201d\u00a0 Judaism\u2019s contribution to human civilization has been almost incalculable, especially given the small number of Jews who have lived at any given time.<\/p>\n

    Nor does the Christian understanding of the Church\u2019s election as a grafting onto Israel (see Romans 9-11) imply special treatment, since the Church understood itself as people redeemed from sin, not as people who have merited a relationship with an ever-benevolent God.\u00a0 When critics charge Jews and Christians, and thus the Bible, with self-promotion in pursuing a doctrine of election, they simply do not understand what we are saying.\u00a0 In fairness, we often do not understand well ourselves.\u00a0 But the problem lies much less with the Bible or the religious doctrines of the two faiths than with our failure to live out the implications of our own beliefs.<\/p>\n

    The second objection is more serious, and it has occupied biblical interpreters since at least the first century BC.\u00a0 The great Jewish biblical interpreter Philo, roughly a contemporary of Jesus, already addressed this question in a series of commentaries on the Pentateuch.\u00a0 His answer, which has often been followed in one way or another, was to interpret the biblical texts about God\u2019s emotions and actions metaphorically, even allegorically.\u00a0 In such a construal, God does not really<\/em> express anger or joy, sorrow or frustration.\u00a0 Such attributions of character or behavior are simply the closest human equivalents for untutored minds.<\/p>\n

    Such a strategy has obvious problems, not least that it seems simply to dodge the text\u2019s plain statements in the interests of a predetermined agenda.\u00a0 But is this really what Philo and his countless followers are doing?\u00a0 After all, texts do signify in many different ways, and metaphor is an important one, widespread in many cultures and bodies of literature.\u00a0 Moreover, given the fragility of human language, its lack of precision even for describing human lives, is it really so implausible to think that our words and discourses would suffer from serious limitations in their talking about an infinite being?\u00a0 Surely Philo\u2019s approach is not as off-base as it seems at first.<\/p>\n

    To get hold of the biblical approach to divine characterization, we might propose several considerations.\u00a0 (1) Things may not always be what they seem in a text.\u00a0 For example, when Yahweh asks the Satan to consider his servant Job and then allows the poor man to experience various trials that would prove his valor, we do well to ask what is going on.\u00a0 On the one hand, the Almighty seems to have immense confidence \u2013 almost too much confidence \u2013 in human capacity for virtue.\u00a0 On the other, Yahweh\u2019s motivations are not entirely clear.\u00a0 Not only must the reader allow for the demands of a narrative \u2013 a character has to initiate a trial in order for the following theological discourse to have some connection to human experience \u2013 but the precise motivations of Yahweh are not entirely clear even within the narrative.\u00a0 By wagering on human integrity, doesn\u2019t God (in the story at least) intend to disagree with those human beings who would defend cosmic justice by erasing the dignity of their own species?\u00a0 In other words, how do we take the narrative itself, as a realistic representation of an event in history or a history-like happening, or as a parable not to be taken literally?\u00a0 Surely the last options makes most sense of the literary goals of the book of Job.\u00a0 Thus it would be silly to imagine that the author of Job imagines God as a puppet-master working humans through their paces to illustrate his own superiority (which is never in question in the book of Job or the Bible as a whole).<\/p>\n

    (2) If texts are not always what a superficial analysis of them would make them seem to be, how do we know when we\u2019re giving them due consideration?\u00a0 The short answer is that we have to become better readers, attentive to subtlety.\u00a0 This is not some exercise for a small elite group.\u00a0 It is a task available to all, and in fact, a very democratic task in many ways.\u00a0 The church and the synagogue have always existed as reading societies \u2013 among other things! \u2013 fostering thoughtful, engaged, life-changing consideration of story and song, prophecy and wisdom. \u00a0At least we try.\u00a0 And we should keep trying.<\/p>\n

    (3) So, to continue the response to the second charge, we have to be very careful not to assume that the various biblical texts\u2019 portrayal of God are straightforward. \u00a0We should always ask, if a text portrays God as angry, say, what the source of the anger is. \u00a0Is anger about injustice inappropriate, for example? \u00a0Would a deity unmoved by suffering or oppression be preferable to one who loved good and hated evil in some way or another? \u00a0Something to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is a continuation of a prior post on the Bible and what it does and does not say.\u00a0 The series will continue next time as well. To respond to the claim that the Bible is immoral, a claim often made in our current world,\u00a0 it makes sense to try to unravel several distinct charges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Christians Love the Bible (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/why-christians-love-the-bible-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Christians Love the Bible (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a continuation of a prior post on the Bible and what it does and does not say.\u00a0 The series will continue next time as well. 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