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How Not to Interpret Scripture
Crisis Magazine ^
| March 21, 2016
| MICHAEL HAYES
Posted on 03/21/2016 3:43:44 PM PDT by NYer
There is a class that most college students will take at one point in their academic career. It is the course on Western CivilizationWestern Civ for short. It is a feeble attempt to supplement the modern college curriculum (typically in two freshman-level courses) with what used to be the very backbone of a liberal education. The course revolves around classics of the Western Tradition: Platos Republic, Virgils Aeneid, Augustines Confessions, Descartes Meditations, and Lockes Second Treatise on Government. But one text in particular, I think, has been subject to mistreatment and misusethe Holy Bible.
The problem is simple. One of the goals of the Western Civilization class is to teach students the ways in which certain texts have shaped the world in which we live. This often does not happen within the modern secular university.
The reason for this is that most people charged with teaching such classes have been deeply steeped within the modern worldview; as such, their understanding of scripture is quite different from the approach that shaped the ancient and medieval world. Typically, there are three ways to understand scripture available to the modern mindnone of these are true to the actual historical reading of the Bible; more importantly, none of these accurately reflect the way in which the Bible has been understood within the Catholic intellectual tradition.
The first of these three approaches to scripture is fundamentalism. This view, which has been popular in America for over a century, is a byproduct of the Protestant rejection of the interpretive tradition of the Catholic Church. Instead of relying on a tradition of apostolic tradition (full of flawed human beings, to be sure) or on the powers of human reason (which are often mistaken) to aid in our understanding of Gods Word, the fundamentalist view simply accepts all passages of the Bible as literal, historical truths. If the genealogy from Adam suggests that the world is 6000 years old, so be itregardless of what human reason, through the sciences of geology, biology, anthropology, and all the rest may say. The word of God is meant to be taken literally at every stepand our faith demands that we reject our own reason when it conflicts with this literalistic approach to the scriptures.
While this approach to scripture is somewhat influential throughout America, the second approach is constantly growing in popularity among those with a weak background in theology and history, and especially among those who spend a considerable amount of time on the internet (i.e., the young). It is largely derivative of the fundamentalist view, except it is highly antagonistic in nature. This approach to scripture is largely characterized by a highly uncharitable reading of various passages with the intention to undermine their moral, spiritual, or religious authority. Popular authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and popular figures in entertainment like Bill Maher are spokesmen for this approach.
You expect me to believe that snakes can talk? Or that the first day could have existed before the creation of celestial bodies? How childish, how absurd, they say, without ever attempting to penetrate the text in pursuit of deeper, spiritual, truths.
This view, while rarely endorsed by college faculty (for even most unchurched professors understand how anti-intellectual it actually is) is nevertheless very popular on college campuses due to the combination of theologically uneducated youths, the internet (where misinformation abounds), and a desire to view oneself as intellectually superior; picking on people of faith is an easy target when one thinks that such people are naive, superstitious, and simply irrational, given the assumption that everything in the Bible is to be understood (by people of faith) to be literal, unambiguous, scientific, historical truth.
The final approach to scripture encountered on college campuses, while certainly more intellectually respectable, is equally unhelpful when trying to gain an understanding of the way in which scripture shaped our world. This is the historical-critical method, developed in the early modern period by philosophers like Benedict Spinoza. Writing in a period of religious persecution and widespread theological controversy, Spinoza argued that biblical scholars should read scripture as if it were not the word of Godas if the many books of the Bible had no collective unity, no overall meaning as a whole, no purpose beyond what the human author, in his own historically limited view of the world, could have intended.
This became the model of all secular Biblical interpretation within modern universitiesthe Bible was a collection of ancient writings, stemming from particular and contingent historical circumstances, which could give us insight into ancient Jewish and Christian thought, but is not necessarily reflective of any higher, deeper truths.
The problem with all of these approaches, at least, within a Western Civilization class, is that they are peculiarly modern. That is, they are entirely inappropriate for understanding the way in which the Bible shaped the Western world within the context of ancient and medieval history, which is typically the context in which they are examined.
If the goal of a Western Civilization class is to help students understand the way in which these texts have shaped the world; if it is to involve them in the great conversation that extends back to the fathers of our Western culture, we ought to teach our students how the great minds within the Catholic intellectual tradition understood the word of God, as it was this Catholic tradition that shaped the West.
Students are often surprised to find that St. Augustine, an ancient Roman in a world of pagan superstition, argued that the creation stories in Genesis are not to be understood as scientific, cosmological truths. They are puzzled by the fact that Aquinas, a medieval monk, praises reason, philosophy, and science in addition to faith. This is a product of their lack of exposure to the very worldview that produced Christendoma blind spot in the college education of many.
The approach to scripture that transformed the Western world is one in which the whole of the scriptures is interpreted through the lens of the Word of God incarnate. God, it is revealed to us, is Truth and Love. Therefore nothing within his revelation can contradict Truth and Loveany interpretation of the Bible that is contrary to the light of human reason or that contradicts the law of love cannot be from God.
Contrary to fundamentalism, our faith, and the scripture in which it is revealed, is not contrary to reason. Contrary to the critics of fundamentalism, we do not treat faith as an anti-intellectual substitute for reason. Contrary to the historical-critical method, the Bible is an integrated whole that cannot be understood merely by an analysis of its parts.
This leads to the last misunderstanding about the scriptures. It is not the Bible alone that serves as the basis for our faith; rather, the Bible is only at home within the Church, with its long apostolic tradition, a tradition of authoritative interpretation that can be traced to Jesus himself. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Ethiopian eunuch could not understand the scriptures until Phillipan apostle, charged with authority by Christinterpreted them for him.
It is rare that this apostolic, Catholic approach to Biblical interpretation is offered to students at our modern, secular universities. Thus, the graduates of these universities may ultimately become ignorant of the understanding of scripture that shaped the world in which we live. The approach to the Bible that produced the West as we know itan approach that looks for deeper, spiritual meanings, transcending the letter of the text, as part of a holistic revelation of the God that is Truth and Loveis often missing from the college curriculum. This is true even in a course like Western Civilization, which places such importance on history, interpretation, and the roots of our culture.
TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Religion & Culture; Theology
KEYWORDS: bible; crisismagazine; education; michaelhayes; modernity; perpetuousity; scripture; westernciv; westerncivilization
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To: MamaB
121
posted on
03/22/2016 4:37:33 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(Obama's dislike of Assad is not based on his brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: MamaB
122
posted on
03/22/2016 5:04:04 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(Obama's dislike of Assad is not based on his brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: Zionist Conspirator
You posted: “we do know when the universe was created. It is Halakhah that the universe was created ex nihilo going on 5776 years ago. The first day of creation was ‘Elul 25 and the sixth day was 1 Tishrei—Ro’sh HaShanah.”
That means that the world was created in 3760 BC by my calculation (2016 AD - 5,776 years), thus the world is younger than what Bishop Ussher calculated.
However, you missed the underlying point of my post: The sarcasm over this arguing about the exact date of the creation of everything by God. Although you did put in a bit of sarcasm yourself, which I appreciated.
123
posted on
03/22/2016 5:50:10 AM PDT
by
GreyFriar
(Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
To: imardmd1
my post was sarcastic over the long squabble about spelling Phil(l)ip and whether or not that showed biblical knowledge.
124
posted on
03/22/2016 5:51:15 AM PDT
by
GreyFriar
(Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
To: GreyFriar
You posted: we do know when the universe was created. It is Halakhah that the universe was created ex nihilo going on 5776 years ago. The first day of creation was Elul 25 and the sixth day was 1 TishreiRosh HaShanah.Yes.
That means that the world was created in 3760 BC by my calculation (2016 AD - 5,776 years), thus the world is younger than what Bishop Ussher calculated.
Yes. As a matter of fact, according to the Kutim (the "Samaritans") the world is even younger than that.
Having heard so often that "no one had ever interpreted Genesis literally until the stupid rednecks came along" I took advantage of an opportunity to send an e-mail to an online Samaritan publication (which gave the years from creation on its home page). The answer I received was that the Samaritans really do believe that all those things actually did happen. So much for "stupid rednecks" inventing Biblical literalism out of whole cloth.
However, you missed the underlying point of my post:
I must have.
The sarcasm over this arguing about the exact date of the creation of everything by God.
I didn't see any sarcasm. I saw yet another post by a (Catholic/Orthodox?) FReeper laughing at retarded "white trash" for believing there are no mistakes whatsoever on any subject in the Written Word of G-d.
Although you did put in a bit of sarcasm yourself, which I appreciated.
I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm sorry you're so dismissive of the Bible's veracity as to interpret it that way. But that is your problem.
125
posted on
03/22/2016 6:05:14 AM PDT
by
Zionist Conspirator
(The "end of history" will be worldwide Judaic Theocracy.)
To: GreyFriar
I guess I missed your POV. It’s becoming clearer.
126
posted on
03/22/2016 6:13:01 AM PDT
by
imardmd1
(Fiat Lux)
To: ealgeone
This is a good question.
I personally believe the account of the Flood is an accurate historical account. I personally believe it retells the flooding of the Black Sea, approximately 7000 years ago (c 5600 BC). See here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
This fits nicely not only with the fact the Flood is recorded in the Bible but also in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Both regions and peoples could have easily heard of and recorded such a flood, knowledge of which was passed on to both peoples from ages long past.
This doesn’t mean it wasn’t done by God nor that there aren’t some important Judeo-Christian truths to be had from the Biblical account. Both are quite true, I firmly believe.
I just don’t believe the entire globe of the Earth was ever covered in water in any point in human history.
To: Zionist Conspirator
You said yourself that you were being sarcastic with this statement:
“Why, they’ll fry in hell for doing that![/sarcasm]”
128
posted on
03/22/2016 6:52:39 AM PDT
by
GreyFriar
(Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
To: FourtySeven
If you compare how the use of the Hebrew word for flood and the Greek word for flood are used it points to a worldwide flood. In Luke the Greek verbs really break down the impact of the Flood.
Also examine the passages concerning the covenant God made after the Flood.
If the flood were local and if anyone has died in a flood in the Mesopotamian area since God made this covenant then God has lied.
I'm currently writing a paper for a seminary class to offer evidence for a worldwide flood.
To: ealgeone
Good luck in your paper. I’d like to read it when you’re done if possible.
About your point about the verbs used to describe the flooding pointing to a “worldwide” flood. As far as I remember, when I investigated this issue before (about 10 years ago but not exhaustively admittedly), yes the intent of the “original authors” of the account was that the Flood encompassed the “whole world”, however that useage must be examined critically. After all, as we all know firstly, the ancients didn’t conceive of the Earth as a globe. They viewed the “world” as flat, only extending to the horizons they could see. So it’s quite possible what they meant as a “world-wide” flood was really a regional flood like the Black Sea flood.
As far as anyone dying in a Mesopotamian flood since the Great Flood making God a liar, this can’t be true since we still have people dying in floods today, and that certainly doesn’t make God a liar.
Make no mistake the Black Sea flooding, if as catastrophic and sudden as some believe, was in every sense of the word, “Biblical” in its scope and severity. We have never seen anything like it since. I don’t see a problem with accepting that as the origin of the Great Flood account, since it not only proves from history that Scripture is right again but it also allows for a literal interpretation of Scripture. All things that should make everyone, on this thread at least, happy.
To: ealgeone
When a religion which wants to look like Christianity sets out to identify itself 'the superior way' that 'way' invariably sows seeds of doubt as to the accuracy of The Bible. We see it perhaps most blatantly in Mormonism, since that religion seeks to establish credulity for the fictional book of Mormon.
Stick with 'the Bible is all true, we just don't yet know how it is all true.'
131
posted on
03/22/2016 7:10:44 AM PDT
by
MHGinTN
(Democrats bait then switch; their fishy voters buy it every time.)
To: FourtySeven
As far as anyone dying in a Mesopotamian flood since the Great Flood making God a liar, this cant be true since we still have people dying in floods today, and that certainly doesnt make God a liar.
God said all flesh would not die due to a flood again.
Now one has to qualify how big or small the world was to justify God not lying.
The plain reading of the text, in conjunction with the passages in Isaiah and the New Testament indicate it's worldwide.
I'll be glad to get you a copy of the paper. Would be interested in your evaluation of the thought process.
Freepmail me on how we can do this.
To: NYer
This was a thread that needed to happen, and yet somehow went to hell in a handbasket.
Education, particularly in America, has become a debased shadow of what it ought to be.
A thorough grounding in what this writer calls “western civ” is necessary or you aren’t really educated at all. We can argue about specific authors and specific works, whether or not they should be in the “canon” but kids who graduate having never read and understood any of this, are not educated and are easily misled by demagogues, not to mention that they must then spend decades de-educating and re-educating themselves.
Christians of every stripe need to look at what passes for education and decide if this is really what they want for their kids. Churches should consider establishing classic college level studies and turning their backs on the crap that is being peddled by the establishment. It makes no sense to bankrupt yourself to have your kids indoctrinated in the flavor-of-the-month and at the end of it, they are not really educated at all. Most people you meet, if they are educated for real, have had to educate themselves. There is room for someone to do something about this if they just will.
But first you have to recognize that there is a problem, and that’s what a thread like this ought to be about. Maybe you can try again and hope for better results.
133
posted on
03/22/2016 10:42:59 AM PDT
by
marron
To: ealgeone
To: ealgeone
Was the Flood recorded in Genesis a myth, a good story, local or worldwide? probably...
135
posted on
03/22/2016 6:16:33 PM PDT
by
terycarl
(COMMON SENSE PREVAILS OVER ALL)
To: MeganC
Funny the difference between Catholic postings on FR and Protestant postings. Catholics post about how wrong the Protestants are and Protestants post about the love of God and the salvation that we find in Jesus. Is that what it means to be Catholic? To always be aware of how morally and religiously superior you are to everyone else? No, thanks. I disagree with your conclusions....Catholics preach the 2,000 year old truth of the Christian religion, Protestants, by their very description, are trying, fruitlessly, to change, eliminate, rewrite, misinterpret, what existed for one thousand six hundred years before they even existed.
136
posted on
03/22/2016 6:36:40 PM PDT
by
terycarl
(COMMON SENSE PREVAILS OVER ALL)
To: terycarl
Wow...way to take a stand on the issue.
To: MamaB
Thank you for saying what I have thought. It seems that they post pro-Catholic instead of pro-Bible. Tis a shame. It is like they hate the Bible. I wonder why. Pro-Catholic IS pro Bible....Catholics get a little upset when folks eliminate entire books, reinterpret what has been taught for 2,000 years, deny apparent truths like Transubstantiation, deny the seven Sacrament instituted by Christ...little things like that.
138
posted on
03/22/2016 6:41:32 PM PDT
by
terycarl
(COMMON SENSE PREVAILS OVER ALL)
To: MamaB
Catholics do NOY hate the Bible. Where did you get that idea?
139
posted on
03/22/2016 6:44:40 PM PDT
by
Salvation
("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
To: MeganC
All too often you folks open your dialogue with something to the effect of You silly stupid Protestants have it all wrong...HARDY-HAR-HAR!! (SNORT!!) (SNEER!!) Like I said, Ive never actually met anyone Catholic in person. Not so sure I want to based on what I see here. You have that EXACTLY in reverse....remember that the Catholics were there for 1,600 years before the Protestant revolution took place. It was the Protestants that ridiculed the Catholics for their beliefs and traditions..
The Catholics said...Jesus took bread, broke it and said "TAKE AND EAT OF THIS, THIS IS MY BODY" and the protestants decided that He rally didn't mean that and chastised Catholics for their belief.
140
posted on
03/22/2016 6:49:07 PM PDT
by
terycarl
(COMMON SENSE PREVAILS OVER ALL)
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