This was supposed to be a comment on Aja's post, but it was too long and it wouldn't let me post it. So this is actually a comment, not my own post.
Aja, I can definitely see what you’re saying about it being hypocritical to only pick some parts of Christianity to believe in, and it’s definitely something that I’ve thought a lot about. I mean, I still have a ton of doubts about Christianity, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask if you want to understand how a strong Christian would approach the issue, but here’s what I’ve come up with in terms of what to believe/not believe.
First of all, the Bible is made up of 66 books all written by different authors in very different genres, so I think some interpretation methods have to change as a result of genre. Why would I ever take poetry literally, for example? In the English Bible, the first chapters of Genesis are formatted, more or less, in the form of a prose narrative. I’ve heard the first two chapters of Genesis read in Hebrew before, and it sounds like a poem. In my Spanish Bible, it is also formatted as a poem, and I know that the Spanish version is an interpretive translation just as much as the English version is, but it just goes to show that a lot of people view the first few chapters of Genesis as a poem, and it could be that the original Hebrew text was as well.
Secondly, if God is infinite and we are finite, then it is impossible for him to be completely comprehensible to us. Because of that, I think that any language we use to describe God must be symbolic. It seems natural that people would come up with symbols that relate to their experience—for example, God is continually referred to in the Bible as a king and as a shepherd, but those symbols aren’t particularly pertinent to our experience, so we tend to not use them as much. It’s not that God is literally a king or literally a shepherd, but rather that those are symbols for some of his attributes—that he is powerful, that he leads his followers, that he is good to them, etc. In the same way, why should the symbol of Creator be any different? Maybe he did literally create the world and made it look like it evolved, but maybe he didn’t. It seems natural that people would use the role of Creator to describe him in order to express that God was their source of life, their source of purpose, and that their way of life was ordained by God. Like we talked about earlier, it was their way of explaining how the world works and what their experience of God was like. In the New Testament, there are several passages where the language used sounds exactly like the language of Plato’s Republic, which doesn’t mean that it isn’t valid, it just shows that people express truth through the language that is known to them, and in a society heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, that is the language the Bible was written in. According to Tillich, “The criterion of the truth of faith therefore is that it implies an element of self-negation. That symbol is most adequate which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy…Ex: Biblical research has shown the impossibility of considering the Bible as containing the infallible truth of faith” (Dynamics of Faith p 112-113). That doesn’t mean that the Bible isn’t important. It still expresses truth about a great many things and teaches us much of what we know about God, but I think it does so symbolically, and I think that it would be more of a perversion of faith to interpret the entire Bible in the exact way and to take all of it literally than it would be to accept the uncertainty inherent in faith and recognize that everything we express about God is merely a symbol for what he really is because God is too big for us to wrap our minds around and describe concretely.
Thirdly, there are SO many different interpretations of the Bible, that I think it would be difficult to say that one is completely right and all the others are wrong. I mean, when they blatantly contradict each other, one must be more right than the other, but how can you ever know for sure which one is? You can argue which one best fits your experience of reality and which one makes the most sense, and eventually accept one to follow, but that doesn’t mean it’s absolutely 100% true. What Ham refers to as a “compromise” is anything that goes against his particular interpretation, but how does he know for sure that he is right?
You said, “Even if we were to define the Biblical account of creation as merely a parable, we would have to admit that it does provide a solid basis for the concept of sin, the Fall of humanity through Adam’s rebellion, and the subsequent curse followed by death, disease and suffering. It wouldn’t be false to claim that this account of creation provides the solid basis upon which major, overarching concepts of Christianity stand.” What you’re referring to is the Augustinian model, which is what pretty much all Western Christian churches follow. Basically, it’s cyclical. God created everything and it was a perfect paradise. Then Adam and Eve were tempted and they sinned. That is when evil entered the world, and from then on, the world exists in a state of sin and irreparable brokenness. Then Jesus died on the cross and if you accept him as your Savior, then you will be redeemed and eventually go back up the way things were initially intended to be after you die. And if you don’t accept him, then regardless of how good of a life you lived, you go to hell.
This is what I was always taught in church, and I agree that it does explain why evil came into the world, why Jesus needed to come to save us, why there is so much suffering in the world today, etc., but I also think there are a lot of problems with the model. First of all, one thing that many Christians (mostly Calvinists) believe is that God’s grace is irresistible. But if that is the case and if God is immutable, then why was his grace not irresistible in the Garden? If Adam and Eve were living in a perfect paradise in perfect communion with their God, why did they fall? Is a part of God’s image corruptible? Secondly, where did evil come from? How did it come about out of nothing, or rather how did a part of good just stop existing (since good is a substance, but evil is merely the negation of the good and has no substance of its own)? Did evil come about because of God if he created a world in which he knew that Adam and Eve would inevitably fall? Is he really good if he created people in order to send them to hell? How were Adam and Eve supposed to know that eating the fruit was wrong if the tree was what contained the knowledge of good and evil? Pride, which is a sin, came before the fall. Thirdly, if it was impossible for Jesus to sin, then did he really have free will? And if he didn’t have free will, then was he really human? Most people who follow this model also claim God to be omnipotent, which poses a problem for them if they think that he is also omnibenevolent, but I'm not sure where in the Bible it says that God is omnipotent. It says that he is very very powerful, but I think there is a difference between being very powerful and ALL powerful.
Also, according to this model, the world makes no sense without a very particular view of God, and so is contrary to the reality that much of the world experiences. This model paints a picture of a God who is perfectly just and perfectly good, as witnessed by the fact that the responsibility for sin is placed entirely on humans for eating the fruit. Justice, at least at some level, is one of the very few things that I’m pretty confident I know for sure (e.g. murder, rape, child abuse, etc. are terribly wrong). But if God is perfectly just and his view of justice does not correspond to my view, then he must be right because he’s God and he is the standard of justice. Which means that my view of justice must be wrong. If that’s the case, then how can I trust myself at all? How can any of my experiences, thoughts, or feelings be valid if everything I know is based solely on what God “tells” me to believe about the world rather than on my experience of the world itself? Shouldn’t God correspond to reality rather than contradicting it? I’ve always thought that you have to trust yourself at least a little bit to trust anyone else because if I trust you, it’s because, based on my experience of you, I deem you to be a trustworthy person. That means I must trust that my experience of you is valid and I must trust my ability to determine whether or not you are a trustworthy person. Hence, I must trust myself to a small extent to be able to trust you. Thus, if the very act of believing in a God who is so contrary to everything that I know destroys any trust I have in myself and forces me to deny my experience of reality, then how am I supposed to be able to trust him either?
In my religion class, we recently learned about an alternative model called the Irenaean model, which, as far as I can gather, is what the Eastern Orthodox church follows (which is a lot of people—this isn’t just a small group of Christians who believe it). Irenaeas also came before Augustine did, so this isn’t just a new form of liberal Christianity. Instead of being cyclical, this model is linear. The universe was created a long time ago and God is distant from the universe. Evil was built into the way things were at the beginning of the universe. By the time humans came into being, there was already death and destruction in the world because animals had been killing each other for a long time. The story of the fall is taken to mean that Adam and Eve were initially children, and they, like all other humans, lost their innocence as they grew into adulthood. Jesus came to pay a ransom for our sins and so that we could become God-like. This line of thought views man as being still in the process of creation, because humans strive to become more like God. This process of “soul-making” is something that won’t be finished until after you die. For them, the soul is a sort of cognizant awareness, and the Bible need not be taken literally because it was a way for people to explain what they saw using language, which is subjective. This model also claims that humans and God both have equal responsibility for sin. God put them into a world where they would almost inevitably sin, but humans still made that decision. It would be as if you put a recovering alcoholic into a room full of alcohol and told him not to drink it. If he drank it, it would be partly your responsibility for doing that to him, and partly his for actually doing it. But one of the most important aspects of this model is the fact that evolution is perfectly compatible with it because it does not take the Bible literally and because “creation” is viewed as a process (both the physical evolution of species as well as the evolution of the soul to be more like God). Granted, there are lots of problems with this model too, and it still doesn’t explain exactly where evil came from, it’s just something that has always been there. And there may be some glaring inconsistencies in the model that I haven’t discovered because I just learned about it in class and have not studied it extensively, but based upon what I know about it now, it seems to make more sense of my experience of how the world works than the Augustinian model does, and it is perfectly compatible with science and evolution.
So, all that to say, maybe you’re right and it’s hypocritical to take some parts of the Bible literally and to understand others as metaphors, but I’m not sure how it’s possible to avoid doing that. First of all, I think genre is important in interpreting the Bible, and I think that the only way to express truth about God is through symbols—and we need to recognize that they are merely that: symbols, not concrete, absolute truth. And secondly, there are so many different interpretations of the Bible that I think it’s important to consider different ones and to make sure that religious belief is consistent with your experience of reality. There are many other interpretations of Genesis that are compatible with evolution, such as the Irenaean model, which I’m pretty sure most of the Eastern Orthodox Church accepts. Not that I’m going to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy or anything, but I do find their approach to the Bible as literature is helpful. I still have a ton of doubts about Christianity, mostly due to the problem of evil, the issue of whether and to what extent God can be experienced, and there are a ton of problems I have with the church, but none of my doubts about Christianity are really related to science because I think there are enough different ways out there to understand how the two can be compatible.
Kala let me just say thank you for posting something longer than me!!!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed what you had to say about different interpretations of the bible in different Christian cultures. It really got me thinking about the differences between Greek Orthodox Christianity and Western Christianity, which got me thinking about Europe vs. America.
It is pretty clear that Creationism is a larger issue in the United States than it is in Europe. Though at first I thought this was weird, I then realized it was not that out of the ordinary. In many European countries Gay Marriage is legal; America is lagging behind in this regard. In Europe they have been using the metric system for decades; America is still using the imperial system. Most schools in Europe require their students to be bilingual or even trilingual, yet in America we have trouble getting our students to master reading and writing English. In so many ways Europe excels in places America does not. Creationism is no different. American Creationists are stuck in their ways. They like what they like and refuse to change their opinions on the world because they are Christian Americans and therefore must be right. I find striking similarities between the push to get Creationism in the schools and the debate to make English the national language and the debate to put restrictions on immigrants that do not speak English. It is Americans pushing their opinion on the rest of the world and other cultures because they have to be right because they were born in America. Though this is not simply an American thing, it is a Western Culture attitude. When the English came to the Americas they believed their clothing, religion, and culture were better simply because they were theirs even though the native Americans has been thriving for centuries before the English arrived. American Creationists needs to stop thumping their Bibles and look at what the rest of the Christian World is saying about the Bible. Then maybe, just maybe, we could come to a understanding and an end to this debate.
Kala, thanks for writing such a detailed and comprehensive response to my question! It’s really eye-opening to see how many different cultural interpretations exist for just one text. I agree with your explanation that the need to interpret at all comes from the fact that the idea of God must be experienced symbolically. I would also add to that that there is definitely a compromise between the desire to adhere to a religious belief and the understanding that the literal word of the Bible often describes events that are, to us, supernatural or fantastic, and therefore cannot be accommodated by our grasp on reality.
ReplyDeleteThe theme I see from all of these interpretations is that, no matter your culture or tradition’s specific reading of the Bible, the overarching goal always seems to be leading a good life and following the basic tenets of the faith. In fact, most religious people I know tend to stick to this principle, seeing Biblical stories just as parables and metaphors. However, (to play devil’s advocate) I’m still not entirely sold on the idea that the process of interpretation or making a text suitable to one’s own sense of morality or understanding of religion, can take place without necessarily endangering the authenticity of the original text. I’m not saying religion must be all-or-nothing (obviously I’d rather interact with reasonable, knowledgeable religious people than extremists like Ken Ham who actually believe in the all-or-nothing approach). But I can’t help thinking, that if people have already changed the authentic “word” to suit their own culture, circumstances, tradition, practices, sense of morality, etc, then the only purpose of religion becomes one’s individual relationship with a supreme being, which is more akin to spirituality and renders organized religion in effect useless.
To get away from the philosophical (that’s just my way of thinking about things, and it’s heavily influenced by my non-religious beliefs), I was really impressed by the multitude of different interpretations that exist. You bring up many contradictions in the faith that we can really only speculate on, and I think it’s important that you acknowledge how complex and interpretive the process of belief actually is. It requires much more thought than just accepting a certain paradigm or doctrine at face value, and this is only confirmed by vastly different interpretations that you’ve described, which I’m sure are a few among many.
Yeah, that’s definitely a valid critique. I think many Christians would claim that there’s a difference between interpreting certain genres of literature in a certain way and interpreting direct commands of God to make them fit your personal standard of morality. There may be some truth to that; however, I realize that that’s not a very satisfactory answer because there are plenty of Old Testament commands that Christians do not follow today, so then there is always the question of which commands (e.g. do not murder) were intended to be universal, and which ones were applicable only to a specific culture and a specific era. So yeah, I am skeptical of organized religion as well. On one hand, I think that religion is a very important matter, and it is helpful to have a community in which you can discuss it. It would be very difficult to learn about religion or spirituality if there was no sort of religious community to learn from. But I can’t say I quite agree with the way each church mandates that you believe their particular expression of faith and blindly accept their particular doctrines, because this rules out any element of doubt or self-critique, which I think is hugely important. I attended a Christian high school, and while there were some things I disagreed with (such as my biology teacher teaching creationism), there were many other teachers who encouraged us to think about religion in a more critical way. My Bible teacher, for example, had us read Nietzsche (for the purpose of trying to understand him, not to destroy his philosophy), and he was very against Biblical literalists, and taught Genesis in a way that was compatible with evolution. Because he encouraged us to doubt and ask questions about Christianity, I found it to be a very valuable experience. Granted, that is not the role of the church in the sense that they should not teach other religions in the service, but they could still be more open to self-critique and to providing other groups or classes for people to learn about other worldviews. I don’t think it’s wrong for them to teach their specific doctrines and defend why they think they’re right, but they should still accept that they don’t know for sure. If organized religion took that sort of approach, then I would see value in it because I think it’s important to discuss religion in a more critical way and figure out what makes the most sense, even if that means that in the end, not everyone will agree on exactly the same doctrines. However, I have never found a church that is accepting of doubt and that does not expect you to believe everything they teach you, even though the things they are teaching are interpretive and cannot be known for certain. So, I guess I agree that organized religion, as I have experienced it in churches, is not very useful. However, if the church was a place to learn about different interpretations of the Bible and discuss the merits/shortcomings of each, trying to figure out which corresponds best to reality, and whether and to what extent Christianity corresponds to reality, then I could see how organized religion would be useful. But then again, I’m clearly not a very good Christian, so it may be best to find someone else to explain the value of the church :)
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