How Not to Interpret Scripture

There is a class that most college students will take at one point in their academic career. It is the course on Western Civilization—“Western 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: Plato’s Republic, Virgil’s Aeneid, Augustine’s Confessions, Descartes’ Meditations, and Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. But one text in particular, I think, has been subject to mistreatment and misuse—the 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 mind—none 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 God’s 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 it—regardless 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 step—and 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 God—as 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 universities—the 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 Christendom—a 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 Love—any 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 Phillip—an apostle, charged with authority by Christ—interpreted 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 it—an 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 Love—is 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.

Don’t forget that Bishop James Ussher, a convinced Calvinist, figured out when the world was created, thus we probably have him to thank for creationism based upon 24/7/52 time scale.

According to his calculations: the time and date of the creation as “the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October... the year before Christ 4004”; that is, around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC according to the proleptic Julian calendar.

Ah yes . . . those rascally Calvinists! They're to blame for the silly un-Catholic idea that G-d doesn't make mistakes or tell lies! How dare they???

Certainly we know that NO Catholic ever in 2000 years ever believed in creationism. Why, Catholics believed in evolution from the beginning! They prosecuted Galileo for Biblical literalism! And I'm sure everyone knows that there was no such thing as a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 until Charles Darwin came along with his "new" theory (which Catholics had always believed for 2000 years anyway) at which point a bunch of "inbred morons" (as opposed to the illiterate intellectuals in Guatemala) suddenly invented total Biblical inerrancy out of whole cloth! Why, they'll fry in hell for doing that![/sarcasm]

Now that you have paraded your ignorance for all to see, I wish to inform you that 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.

I really wish I could show you some of my books right now--none of which were written by Protestants of any persuasion.

Why should any of us come to your every pathetic beck and call to your pet-peeve: evolution, when you know very well where each of us stand on it. At least two of us haven’t even posted on this thread.

Thank you for admitting that the issue is of no concern to you. And until I see one of you actually respond to your evolutionist co-religionists I don't know that about any of you. Why should I believe something of which I have no proof whatsoever? That's what Catholics expect me to do with regard to evolution!

Why should anyone come to the call of a Christ-denier

Ironically, according to Fundamentalist Protestants Catholics are "Chr*st deniers" because they deny that salvation is a totally gratuitous legal loophole requiring no human participation whatsoever. Some of them even call people like you "Judaizers." After all . . . circumcision, baptism . . . what's the difference?

who doesn’t believe in half of the Bible?

Again, I'm really doubting your status as a Profound Intellectual right about now, because you're missing the point that I'm asking you to defend a part of your own Bible, whereas you're asking me to defend something that to me is no different from the "book of mormon." But you just keep on using that as a (pardon the expression) "fig leaf."

And then accuses them of not telling the truth when they refuse to address his each and every ping.

None of you (you and the other FReepers you have pinged) have ever addressed a single one of my pings on this subject. Ever. You have all claimed to believe Genesis is inerrantly true, yet none of you has ever even a single time rebuked an evolutionist, higher critical Catholic, even when the evolutionist Catholic was claiming that creationism is itself heretical and un-Catholic. On top of that, most of you claim to never see any of these posts. That's hard to believe, since I see so many of them.

Only two Catholics have ever publicly opposed evolutionism on this forum. One is my friend wideawake who used to do yeoman battle the evolutionists until he got sick and tired of the whole business. Ethan Clive Osgoode actually has an anti-evolution and anti-Darwin web site, though I've never seen him respond to a "Catholicism mandates evolutionism" post on the forum. (Courtesy ping to both.)

Get lost. If you think I’m a liar, why do you keep pinging me for my opinion?

Please forgive my emotional reaction at seeing an "ancient, unchanged" religion attacking other people for simply standing up for the truth of the so-called "Catholic" Bible--a reaction based on nothing more nor less than an antipathy to the poor rural Anglo-Saxon population of this country (which includes me). I will endeavor from now on to just file you away as being on the other side.

Ishtar and Easter are totally unconnected. The supposed connection has been so thoroughly debunked at all levels that I'm almost, almost, surprised that the anti-Catholic crowd here still runs with it.

Your surmise is so wrong, and MHGinTN's statement is so right, that it is almost laughable that his truth should be contested. Actually, my Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, says that "Easter" is from the prehistoric West Germanic name of a pagan spring festival derived from the root of "east" or "eastern."

In Bible history, Baal and Ashtaroth were the god and goddess of the pagans subverting Israelites (Jdg. 2:13. 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:3-4, 12:10), after whom places and cities were named.

These spring ceremonies were still being observed in Jesus' time by Gentiles, unarguably so. Now looking at Acts 12:1-4, and knowing that by Jewish law, Passover always precedes (Galilean) or starts (Jewish) the days of azumos (unleavened), Peter was arrestedduring those days, so Passover had already passed. But the other Gentile spring feast of Easter very close to Passover had not yet occurred, because it was after "Easter" when Herod intended to bring Peter out to the people (probably to execute him).

And this is why, despite some popular commentators as well as newer mistranslations, both the Authorized Version and MHGunTN are correct.

For more on this, click on:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Bible/easter_is_not_a_mistranslation.htm

Over and over again, in the Old Testament, one sees the planting of, or resort to "groves" (asherim) forbidden by Moses:

"Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee" (Deut 16:21AV).

Strong's Number H842
אשׁירה / אשׁרה
'ăshêrâh / 'ăshêyrâh
Brown, Driver, & Briggs Definition:
Ashera(h) = “groves (for idol worship)”
1) a Babylonian (Astarte)-Canaanite goddess (of fortune and
happiness), the supposed consort of Baal, her images
. . 1a) the goddess, goddesses
. . 1b) her images
. . 1c) sacred trees or poles set up near an altar
Part of Speech: noun proper feminine

This is the same Ashtaroth spoken of above.

I think the rumor is true that the statist church shifted the allegiance of proto-paganists to their culturally prechristian feasts and revelries by renaming them with religion-related identifications--holidays of "saints", of supposed "miracles" (In Hoc Signo), etc. Regarding Easter, why not bunnies, eggs, feasting meals, etc.

In the spring, deliberately slated to not fall on the Jewish Passover days, so as to get the religious observers away from both the Jewish and pagan feast days, yet not altogether abandoning them, but rather collaborating so as to be everything to everybody, the statist "church" exercised its catholicity to ease the native Gentiles into a corrupted, but not true, form of "christianity."

True Bible-believers do not honor these days in ways or manners that would undercut the meaning of the Cross and the Resurrection/Ascension of Our Eternal High Priest.

So be it.

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