Saturday, December 26, 2009

Biblical Literalism or "Is That Really What It Says?"

Daniel Harlow wrote a paper a bit back called Creation According to Genesis: Literary Genre, Cultural Context, Theological Truth. The paper emanated from an origins symposium in 2006 at Calvin College. Initially, he asks the question of why the age of the earth, creation and evolution are such contentious subjects. His answer?
Religious and philosophical worldviews influence cultural values, which in turn shape both political policies and social behaviors. The value we place on human beings; the way we treat both the unborn and the born; the dignity we grant the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled; the stand we take against racism and sexism and other forms of social injustice; the steps we take to preserve endangered species and otherwise protect the environment; the positions we hold on stem-cell research, genetic engineering, and cloning––all these issues and others besides are connected deeply with how we think at the most basic theological level about the creation and the place of the human creature within it.
For many people, this is not a scientific issue, it is a moral one. Even when having conversations with my wife, it is not uncommon for her to say that she understands the evidence and accepts it but that the ramifications make her uncomfortable. Indeed, both the ID side and the new atheists write that "Darwinism" is dangerous. The reasons are similar but the motives are different. Both argue that it leads one away from faith.

Here, Harlow does not tackle the modern manifestations of science and their implications but, rather, the problems inherent in a literal (mis)reading of the creation accounts in Genesis. In so doing, he says something at once profoundly true and profoundly incendiary:
God did not write Genesis. He inspired ancient Israelites to write it, and they did not do so in a cultural vacuum. Following from this, if we take divine accommodation seriously, then Genesis must not be made to say anything that would have been unintelligible or irrelevant to the ancient author and his audience. Modern concerns and concepts must not be foisted anachronistically onto the biblical text. Genesis is God’s word to us, but it was not written to us.
This is the start of the "slippery slope" argument that is soundly resisted by most purveyors of the YEC model—Genesis must be read literally or else there is no barometer for how we should read scripture at all. Troy Lacey writes in AiG:
Of course, it is no surprise that Genesis 1–11 is denigrated by the secular scientific community. But these chapters are the foundational truths of the revealed Word of God, and if the foundation can be destroyed, then the rest of the Bible can also be discarded as a collection of nice stories with no practical value or moral authority.
Many OT historians and theologians have stated that a completely literal read of the creation accounts is facile at best and leads to serious misinterpretations of scripture. That this warning has been around since the time of Augustine and perhaps earlier has very little traction among the recent earth supporters. Ken Ham famously asks "were you there?" when confronted by skeptics. (Of course, neither was he but that is not the point.) Ham replies that God was and he left us his Word, which is clearly understandable. Hmmm. Just what did God leave behind, exactly? According to Daniel Harlow, it is this:
If we were to insist that the Bible gives an accurate picture of the physical cosmos, then to do so with integrity, we would have to believe that the earth is flat, immobile, and resting on pillars; that the sky is solid and has windows in it; that the sun, moon, and stars are set in the sky and move along it like light bulbs along a track; that the sun literally rises, moves, and sets; that there is an ocean of water surrounding the earth; and that beyond the waters above the sky is the very heaven of God. That’s what the Bible says.
Clearly, this is not what your average young earth creationist thinks. In fact, it is not clear to me that anyone within the western or Judeo-Christian perspective thinks this. They probably did around the time that this was written down but we simply know more now than we did then. As time progresses and our understanding of the world increases, hanging onto the literal, YEC viewpoint becomes increasingly difficult. As Conrad Hyers points out:
The literalist, instead of opening up the treasurehouse of symbolic imagination, digresses into more and more ingenious and fantastic attempts at defending literalism itself. Again and again the real issue turns out to be not belief in divine creativity but belief in a particular theory of Scripture, not faith but security. The divine word and work ought to have better handles!
Instead of a different way of interpreting scripture, it is now the only way to do so—with Gary Parker, among others, arguing that such a reading is a salvation issue. That such a one-dimensional read of the scripture has become the de rigueur one for the evangelical community is unfortunate.

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9 comments:

  1. I am a Christian, librarian, palaeoanthropologist, and evolutionary biologist

    All Christians must believe in the Resurrection.

    So if you're really a Christian you believe that Jeebus, after decomposing for three days, became a stinking zombie who later flew up to the clouds.

    You might be a scientist, but you're definitely batshit crazy.

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  2. Anonymous4:45 AM

    "Judeo-" is an exclusively combinative form of the term Judaic, which, therefore, implies that "Judeo" is a dependent element of Christianity. Thus, such usage is a conspicuous Christian supersessionist and displacement theology presumption--false, misleading and offensive.

    Judaic is pro-Torah while Christian, from its inception, is defined as supersessionist antinomian=anti-Torah. The two are absolute, polar and intractable antitheses. The phrase "Judeo-Christian" is as oxymoronic as saying "pro-Torah anti-Torah" (values, traditions, morals, ethics, etc.).

    Where values are shared, the accurate (and honest) way would be to state "Judaic and Christian…" instead of "Judeo-Christian"; ensuring that the distinction between the two polar opposites be maintained and respected. Cordial relations are about respect; not blurring, confusing or misrepresenting.

    Renovator

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  3. Ken Ham famously asks "were you there?" when confronted by skeptics. (Of course, neither was he but that is not the point.) Ham replies that God was and he left us his Word, which is clearly understandable.

    So the obvious question is, was Ham there when the Bible was written?

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  4. For many people, this is not a scientific issue, it is a moral one. Even when having conversations with my wife, it is not uncommon for her to say that she understands the evidence and accepts it but that the ramifications make her uncomfortable.

    I'm not sure what the specific ramifications are that make her uncomfortable. Here's one 'ramification' that makes me (an atheist) very comfortable. Late every night, generally between 1:00 am and 3:00 am, I walk my two big dogs in the meadow north of the house. We're out in the country, so when it's clear I can see lots of stars, and when I see them I am consciously aware -- I consciously think -- that the atoms that constitute my body were manufactured in the fusion furnaces of now dead stars, and that I and everything I see on earth are made of star stuff, to use Carl Sagan's phrase. So I am consciously aware that I am intimately connected to the physical universe.

    Further, that thought never fails to elicit a second thought: I am walking with family in more than a metaphoric sense. My dogs are my distant cousins--we share a common ancestor and are literally family. That awareness extends to every living thing, including every human being: they are all part of my family. That awareness of family provides an intrinsic sense of responsibility for life, a sense that's rooted in 3.5 billion years of ancestry.

    So there are 'ramifications' that can underpin a moral sensibility that stresses relationship and responsibility, and that is not imposed from without but is intrinsic to the world we live in because we know the evidence.

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  5. Human ape: yup, that's me.

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  6. Anonymous, you are probably correct, however, the two traditions have a shared ancestry and the phrase that is usually used is "Judeo-Christian" but "Judaic and Christian" works just as well to convey the sentiment I mean.

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  7. AMW, the answer is, of course, no but to him that is unimportant. He assumes that the Bible was dictated word for word from on high, rather than written down from oral tradition as being the relationship between God and his people.

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  8. Further, that thought never fails to elicit a second thought: I am walking with family in more than a metaphoric sense. My dogs are my distant cousins--we share a common ancestor and are literally family. That awareness extends to every living thing...

    Does that same thought ever pop up at lunch time? [/snark]

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  9. AMW asked

    Does that same thought ever pop up at lunch time? [/snark]

    In fact it does, and is not all that comfortable sometimes. If I were younger I'd probably go vegan; as it is I'm too far down the road of carnivory. :)

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