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I just got Kenneth Bailey’s “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes” in the mail today. I love Kenneth Bailey. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of his work. I’ve been preaching through Luke. Central to Luke is Jesus’ manifesto in 4: 18-21.
Spirit of the LORD is upon me,
for he has anointed me:
To preach good news to the poor he has sent me:
To proclaim for the captives release,
and to the blind sight
To send forth the oppressed in release;
To proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.
He rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant, sat down, all eyes fixed on him…
“Today is fulfilled this scripture in your hearing”
When I read passages like this I am always dumbfounded at the audacity of Jesus. Bailey suggests that the crowd was irate right from when Jesus began to read. The reason? Nazareth was a settlement with a purpose not too distant from what Jewish settlements attempt to do today. This was a Jewish community attempting to “take back” their God given land from Gentile overlords and intruders who were filling the region. “Galilee of the Gentiles” as it was called. They had Jesus the Isaiah scroll with a highly passage that they have understood to be highly nationalistic as the Targum reveals. What does Jesus do? He edits the text, audibly deleting the anti-Gentile zingers that the crowd was anticipating. They are furious. Jesus is betraying their culture war! What’s even more audacious is that he declares that this edited text was fulfilled in him. This left the crowd to chose between two alternatives. Either this text was fulfilled in him and he should be followed (something their Nationalistic interests would not permit) OR he was an arrogant, dangerous young man, a traitor to the cause, and a man to be silenced. According to the story they opt for the more realistic option B.
This Jesus is well embraced today. The captive freeing revolutionary that speaks truth to power.
Why would Paul then later write “slaves obey your masters with fear and trembling in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ…”? Doesn’t this seem wrong compared to the pronouncement that we find from Jesus in Nazareth? But wait, this pronouncement is in Luke, the friend and possibly even disciple of Paul? How could these seemingly contradictory messages come out of the same source?
But wait, it gets weirder. Paul formerly was a culture warrior of highest degree in his persecution of the Christians. Some who sought Jesus death were clearly motivated by the culture war. How many of the conflicts talked about in the Gospels that seem so out of place for us (Sabbath observance, dietary laws, fasting, taxes, etc.) were clearly centered on the fear of Jesus being soft on the Roman occupation and Gentile influence in the holy land? (Imagine Pharisees as softer versions of Osama Bin Laden.) Was Paul’s conversion a switching sides in the culture war?
If Jesus was merely a Roman sympathizer it would explain his visible embrace of others hated by the culture warriors, prostitutes, tax collectors, etc., but it would not explain his refusal to cozy up with the power structures aligned with Rome. Herod wanted to see Jesus, but Jesus clearly rebuffs Herod. Jesus helps a generous Roman centurion (a slave owner whose slave was ill) but hardly plays his cards right with Pilate, even as Pilate is practically begging Jesus to go along to a certain degree assuming Jesus wants to save his own skin.
So Jesus declares release to captives, and Paul tells captives to obey their masters, and the reason isn’t simple Roman sympathy. What else could it be? It’s ironic that we put the bite on Paul for what he says about slavery but we let Jesus off the hook when he heals the Centurion’s slave without chastising the Centurion a bit, healing the slave to continue in his slavery, and in fact praising the Centurion? Was Jesus inconsistent with his desire to free the captives? We see Jesus doing all kinds of miracles which are jaw droppers, but we have not a single story of Jesus accomplishing a relatively easy thing to do like freeing a slave. In fact we have a story of Paul possibly freeing a slave girl by healing her of an evil spirit infuriating her owners. Is Paul inconsistent?
We might say that some other first century believer wrote Ephesians and they included the bits we find objectionable about women and slaves along with other passages that talk about submitting to governing authorities too. But what kind of motivation would first century believers have for this? They were hardly the powerful elite in their culture and they were soon to be persecuted by the very same government they admonished their followers to obey? Furthermore, you also have the strange letter to Philemon where Paul does this strange dance around this one particular instance of slavery.
Jesus doesn’t say to slaves “cast off your chains and slit your master’s throats in their beds!” Words like this might have been welcome in Nazareth, as long as the masters were Roman or Gentiles. In fact it was because he didn’t say such a thing that they were angry.
The most reasonable way to figure all of his out, it seems to me, is to imagine that Jesus declaring a path that would achieve the ends of his manifesto but in a way that was in fact not nationalistic (Jew vs. Gentile) nor was it along the conventional lines of violence (“he who lives by the sword dies by the sword”). He believes this path will result on all of those good things he mentions, not just for Jews, but for Gentiles. Not just for slaves, but for freed people too. Not just for men, but for women too. In this particular situation he won’t submit to the desire of his town elders by allowing them to throw him off a cliff (stone him) but he will allow the national leaders in collaboration with the Romans to do so later. He asserts that the way will be extraordinarily costly, to himself, but that he will embrace this cost willingly, voluntarily, in hope of a greater freedom even for his captors, which will in fact not be guaranteed. Not all of his captors will be wowed by his meekness, many will mock, and he will face the very real consequence of his submission. It will in fact cost him his life.
Could it be that Paul is in fact, giving the same advice to slaves that Jesus followed himself? Practice costly submission with no guarantee of “pay off” (masters realizing that slavery violates the law of love, freeing them at great economic cost to themselves). How could it be responsible to make such personal sacrifice with no guarantee of a preferred outcome?
Paul does so, and lives so (his discipleship was also enormously costly, at the cost of his life, which no one disputes) because he believes that like Jesus, he, the slave, and all who follow in Jesus’ brand of costly discipleship in fact will be vindicated by tomb walking.
What do we know? That masses of Christians practiced such with a hope of resurrection. When plagues hit and pagans fled Christians took in the families of pagans and nursed them, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Pagan plague victims who recovered, as you might imagine, would be powerfully drawn to this strange Jewish religion, and it would be easy to imagine what they would think about those who abandoned them. In fact pagan leaders began to complain that Christians fed not only the Christian poor but the pagan poor as well. Their generosity was so costly and seemingly irresponsible that pagans complained it wasn’t fair. The math for Christians only works out if you imagine that the cost in their flesh, of no current security given the age of decay, was a terrific exchange for flesh that would not decay (Paul’s “imperishability”). Jesus himself was simply giving sound financial advice when he recommends not investing in the age of decay where you can’t keep your investment, but invest in creation 2.0, the resurrection, which will be tangibly witnessed to in his scar marked flesh.
I would suggest that Paul’s advice to slaves is not an endorsement of the slave-holding-establishment, but rather a subversive recommendation that not only endangers the institution of ancient slavery, but subverts the relational polarity (my wellbeing at your expense) of the age of decay and bears witness to the relational polarity of the age to come (your wellbeing at my expense) which is also the relational polarity of the trinity itself.
Matthew 5:43-48 (NRSV)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
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repost from March 14, 2009
This is a cut and paste job from something I wrote on a listserve but I wanted to keep it.
Also within our tradition is the understanding of the two ages. I call them the age of decay and the age to come. These two ages are marked by an antithesis, but not quite in the way expressed by our cousins who are obsessed by what they call “the antithesis”. The antithesis that divides the two ages flows out of kind of a magnetic alignment between the poles of myself and the other. In the age of decay the ethos of empire reigns supreme: “my wellbeing at your expense”. In the age to come, life on earth as it is in heaven, the magnetic field runs in the other direction: “your wellbeing at my expense.” The emblematic expression of this is of course the cross and its vindication and first fruits undoing of the age of decay is the resurrection.
This antithesis must be born witness to in the midst of the age of decay by the antithetical display in the areas of money, sex and power. When money, sex and power flow in the magnetic direction consistent with empire (my wellbeing at your expense) there is no witness to the age to come.
How can such a thing be sustained in the midst of the age of decay? Kingdom antithetical directional living will yield a cruciform lifestyle in this age. There is little pragmatic payoff for living out “your wellbeing at my expense”. Such living gets you exactly what Jesus got, abused, stripped, killed. However, it also gets you resurrection, which is the power that draws you through the costly present amidst the age of decay and into the renewed future.
Our tradition has talked a lot about transformation but I think we have tried to get there on the cheap, which means by circumventing the cross and it can’t be done. Instead of pursing resurrection through the cross we have settled for a surface upgrade via Max Factor.
repost March 18, 2009
I’m still mulling over the Andrew Sullivan piece. That piece reveals a serious slippage in terms of a cultural understanding of what “the gospel” is for. Dr. Wilson will plead with Dr. House to leave the superstitious woman alone in her foolishness if her superstition helps her cope with the difficulties of life (religion or gospel as private therapeutic aid, understood and accepted on those terms).
Much evangelicalism has long tried selling the gospel as after-death hell-avoidance insurance. Culturally that “felt need” has long receded. The broad assumption of “a better place” for all but genocidal dictators seems to have most firmly in its grip.
I’m reading Peter Brown’s biography of Augustine of Hippo. He notes that Augustines first adult conversion was to “Wisdom” via Cicero.
“Cicero had urged Augustine to seek Wisdom: ‘I should not chase after this or that philosophical sect, but should love Wisdom, of whatever kind it should be; that I should search for it, follow hard upon it, hold on to it and embrace it with all my strength. That was what stirred me in that discourse, set me alight, and left me
The precise form of ‘Wisdom’ that Augustine might seek, would, of course, be very different from what Cicero would have recognized as ‘Wisdom’. Augustine was a boy from a Christian household. In an age where only the writings of adults have survived, it is extremely difficult to grasp the nature of the ‘residual’ Christianity of a young man. One thing, however, was certain: a pagan wisdom, a wisdom without the ‘name of Christ’ was quite out of the question.’ Paganism meant nothing to Augustine. In Carthage he will watch the great festivals that were still celebrated at the great temple of the Dea Caelestis: but he will do so in the manner of a Protestant Englishman witnessing the solemn Catholic processions of Italy — they were splendid and interesting; but they had nothing to do with religion as he knew it.
Moreover, Augustine grew up in an age where men thought that they shared the physical world with malevolent demons. They felt this quite as intensely as we feel the presence of myriads of dangerous bacteria. The ‘name of Christ’ was applied to the Christian like a vaccination. It was the only guarantee of safety. As a child, Augustine had been ‘salted’ to keep out the demons; when he had suddenly fallen ill, as a boy, he would plead to be baptized.’ These Christian rites, of course, might influence a grown-up man’s conduct as little as the possession of a certificate of vaccination; but they expressed a mentality that had cut off, as positively ‘unhygienic’, the pagan religion of the classical past.
In Carthage, Augustine had remained loyal to the Catholic church. He had already grown to love the solemn Easter vigils of the great basilicas.’ A stranger from the provinces, he would, of course, go to church to find a girl-friend, much as another stranger, the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, will meet his wife in Seville Cathedral.
Above all, the Christianity of the fourth century would have been presented to such a boy as a form of ‘True Wisdom’. The Christ of the popular imagination was not a suffering Saviour. There are no crucifixes in the fourth century. He was, rather, ‘the Great Word of God, the Wisdom of God.” On the sarcophagi of the age, He is always shown as a Teacher, teaching His Wisdom to a coterie of budding philosophers. For a cultivated man, the essence of Christianity consisted in just this. Christ, as the ‘Wisdom of God’, had established a monopoly in Wisdom: the clear Christian revelation had trumped and replaced the conflicting opinions of the pagan philosophers; ‘Here, here is that for which all philosophers have sought throughout their life, but never once been able to track down, to embrace, to hold firm. . . . He who would be a wise man, a complete man, let him hear the voice of God. ” Peter Brown “Augustine of Hippo” pg. 30,31.
What is interesting to me about that piece is (according to Brown) the assumed location of Christ in the public understanding. Christ was efficacious for gaining “Wisdom” in Augustine’s world. For what is Christ “efficacious” in our contemporary cultural imagination? The church is all over the place on this score. It seems getting this clear (and articulating it clearly) is a very central task for preachers. Why ask someone “into” something unless you have it crystal clear what it is for.
I wrote this responding to a friend who had questions after reading a lot of the new stuff by Borg, Erhman and Crossan regarding Paul, Jesus and the development of Christianity.
Let me start off with a link. I scanned a portion of Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” and posted it on my server. It’s a scholarly work as opposed to a piece oriented to lay persons but I think it’s quite clear in what it intends to communicate. Tell me if you have trouble with the link. I can e-mail it directly otherwise.
Consider the response on the book of Acts to Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill. There’s a lot of suspicion around regarding the canonical texts, but consider the text itself of that encounter. If we were suspicious that the text was a manipulative hack job intended to magnify Paul and embellish a legend we’d imagine that the author would report that thousands would be “added to their number” as we saw earlier in the book at Pentecost. Paul is waiting in Athens for his buddies and is bugged by the idols so he starts causing trouble as was his pattern it seems in many of these cities. He preaches the very famous sermon, complete with references to pagan texts and the response if frankly, underwhelming. Why?
Maybe the Athenians are too smart for him, maybe their snobs, whatever. It seems a most reasonable possibility is that they simply had so little frame of reference that Paul’s sermon would simply have been regarded as gibberish, which again, according to the text, seems to have been the response. A few wanted to hear more and eventually became believers according to the text, and they are in fact, NAMED. Why would these names be dropped here, unless, in fact, these names would have meant something to Luke’s intended readers.
That issue of naming launched Bauckham on his study. Why is the name dropping in the gospels so inconsistent. Some people are named in multiple gospels, some people aren’t, and even when we have a very strong indication of textual dependency (Matthew copied Mark for example) the names aren’t always carried over. Why would Matthew decide to include some names and not others? There is clearly purpose behind why and when some are named and some are not.
In the same book of Acts we find very different responses to Paul’s work. We know that in some places he was there only a short time, other places longer, and we know that the church spread to other places where he never visited. We also know that it was Paul’s habit of starting with the Hellenized Jewish community in each place. That makes perfect sense, of course, because they in fact are “his people”. It is very interesting looking at the early chapter of Acts and noting the tension between the Hellenistic community in Jerusalem and the “Hebrew” community. The “deacons” all have Hellenistic names. They start “waiting tables” but it seems very quickly that they expand their own job descriptions as we find Stephen preaching and irritating other “not so Hebrew” Jews. It seems in fact that the Jerusalem persecution that broke out early was among the Hellenists. The Apostles didn’t flee, but the “deacons” go out and in fact become the first wave of evangelists into Samaria, Antioch and into the Hellenistic Jewish communities. That makes perfect sense of course. That was where they had family connections and cultural similarity.
OK, back to the story. Why was Paul able it seemed to get so much traction in some communities and not others? I would suggest two reasons: 1. The cultural/theological/language/worldview was already set by Judaism. Paul was a Pharisee and very at home in the Synagogue and an expert in the religious tradition of the “God fearers” and Hellenistic Jews wherever he went. It seems the “God fearers” (non-Jews exhibiting some participation in the Jewish community who had not necessarily become formal converts) were “easy pickings” for this new Jesus movement. Motivation regarding circumcision for some I’m sure played a role. But also, there would have been other sources of Jesus material that had gone out. Bauckham gets into this directly.
Consider this as well. Very quickly in places like Corinth we see Paul dealing with “super-apostles”. These were obviously people also carrying Jesus information into the communities. We also meet characters like Apollos who are out there telling Jesus stories and making claims about the resurrection and having ideas about what he might be that seem highly non-monotheistic.
These contemporary authors like Ehrman and others like to posit “lots of Christianities”. From the NT Epistles it certainly seems that Paul had plenty to deal with from “super-apostles”, not getting along even with his co-workers, Judaizers (People influenced by the Jesus story who were demanding observance of OT Law) and likely plenty of others. What might assumptions might we make about the context from which all this Jesus connected activity is arising? Imagining a poverty of information about Jesus seems the least likely option. Imaging that Paul had a thin portfolio on Jesus seems very strange for a man who had a significant period of time prior to the Acts stories and also one that was zealous enough about his Savior to suffer all the catastrophe and calamity he testifies to.
It’s also important to not fall victim to historical snobbery, to imagine that somehow first century people were gullible dimwits who couldn’t didn’t understand what it meant to be lied to, manipulated, sold a religious bill of goods. These cities in the Roman empire were filled with all manner of religious movements aggressively seeking converts and patrons. These people would have understood a religious marketplace. Now this strange story out of Judea arises talking about, of all things, resurrection! The response in Athens is most understandable. What is more remarkable is the response in the cities where churches would in fact take root, grow despite persecution, motivate believers to act generously with a reckless disregard for their own economic and physical safety and well-being to such a degree that in not too long a time dominant paganism itself that had held sway over that region for hundreds of years would be displaced by this strange Jewish sect.
When Paul and others start telling stories people are going to ask questions, check sources to the degree they can, which will likely be fact checking and name checking, and comparing notes on just exactly who this Jesus-savior is, what he taught, and what they are saying REALLY happened to him.
To me Bauckham’s account rings true. Paul, and others, learned the Jesus tradition that was handed over to them and that’s what they worked from. There were certainly conflicts and tensions, even between Paul and the apostles. We don’t need to learn about that from a book published by someone guessing about it today, you can find that in the canonical record. pvk
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/04/journey-to-tehr.html
This little section struck me…
Out the door again at 8:00am for a meeting with President Ahmadinejad’s press adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a polite and smiling man with a prematurely snow-white beard.
Javanfekr wanted to know what I wanted to talk about.
We sat over tea and chatted for an hour about just about everything on the table between the U.S. and Iran. What surprised me most was the spokesman’s skepticism about who really caused the Sept. 11th attacks.
There is no skepticism on my part about who caused 9/11. I think the record is quite clear. Two things to remember:
1. What is clear for one is not necessarily clear for another. Clarity (which may be correct or incorrect clarity) is often a function of community.
2. Disagreement over the truth doesn’t undermine the fact that the truth exists. The confusion is a common function of human knowledge and must be weighed in relations to human community.
Repost Sept 25, 2006
A good illustration of what Keller means by “religion” is Earl Hickey in the TV sitcom “My Name is Earl”. Earl presents a very practical reduction of the notion of karma: “Do good things, good things happen. Do bad things, bad things happen.” Earl came to this conclusion after facing the face that his life “sucked” (in his words) and he came to the understanding that if he wanted better things for his life he needed to straighten up his act. As he is recuperating in the hospital bed after losing a winning lottery ticket getting hit by a car he starts a list of all the bad things he’s done. “I’m just trying to be a better person.”
I first used Earl as a works-righteousness illustration when I was preaching through the Heidelberg Catechism. The response from some in the congregation was surprising and enlightening for me. A number of people thought that I was being rough on Earl. Earl is the hero of the show and many articulated that Earl’s ambitions were good and right. Who could criticize someone just trying to be a better person? The show is about Earl’s attempts at reformation. He’s stopped stealing, cut down on his lying, he goes out of his way to do helpful things for others. Many see Earl as a positive role model. “If more people could be like Earl Hickey then the world would be a better place…” This is precisely why he’s such a perfect illustration of what Keller says is the difference between “religion” and “gospel”. Religion says, “if I do good things, good things will happen to me/for me.” In fact if you watch the show long enough you’ll see that for Earl Hickey karma really isn’t very much like karma in the sense of Eastern religions, karma really is God. Earl talks to karma, has a sort of relationship with karma. It is really a good personalization of Christian Smith’s moralistic, therapeutic deism.
Earl nicely illustrates one of humanity’s chief ambitions for human improvement and how popular this project is for all of us inside and outside the church. Many church going folks will quickly identify and applaud Earl Hickey and point to him as a good example. What Keller points out, following the Protestant reformers, is that “karma” is a cruel taskmaster. Earl’s list is unrelenting, in fact he often has to add to it. The show is very open about this to its credit. In one episode Earl returns a stolen laptop computer to an attractive college professor with whom he falls in love. He forgets/ignores the fact that on the way he knocked down a bus stop sign leaving riders stranded without transportation and having promised to fix it. Karma goes to work through darts and bees punishing Earl for his transgression of forgetting the plight of the bus riders. Earl then starts complaining to karma and declaring his independence saying “I will not be karma’s bitch!” He eventually has to relent, give up on the girl and fix the bus stop. In another episode he punches out an evil fast-food manager only to realize at the end of the episode that “karma doesn’t have fists” so he had to be karma’s fist. Karma used him. Tons of Christian metaphor and imagery throughout the shows. It is, however, a Christianity of works-righteousness and Earl is a slave to his idea of a good life and he is in fact “karma’s bitch”.
For Keller gospel is freedom, religion is slavery. Gospel is God saving us, religion is us trying to save ourselves through moral effort. Keller’s articulation of this is essentially the same as the Heidelberg Catechism. In fact, I started figuring Keller out as I was working on my series through the Catechism because I began to notice that the dissonance I was sensing in reading the catechism was do to my own harboring of works-righteousness and “religion” in my own heart. The catechism is written from a radical assumption of misery, deliverance and gratitude which leads it to make all kinds of statements like the Q/A on Providence. If you read that with an Earl perspective the Q/A comes of completely unfair and unappealing. Why would God allow illness, lean years, drought into my life. I’m trying to be a better person and God isn’t keeping up his end of the deal. (Keller deals with this issue again and again in his preaching.) Deep in our hearts we have figured out from a natural law observation that bad brings bad and good brings good and we’ve concocted the idea of how to capitalize on this. It is basic paganism.
Gospel is seen amazingly in the parable of the lost son. Ken Bailey I think is best on this story. In the parable both sons are practicing self-salvation/religion. Both sons are saying by their behavior that they want what the father can give them more than they want the father. They just have two different ways of pursuing this agenda. The younger son is the irreligious son and takes the less sophisticated, clumsy approach. “Cash me out I’m making my own life.” It is a disaster. Bailey I think is incredibly insightful in seeing that out on the field of the far off country with the pigs the younger son fashions for himself a Pharaoh like way of not being karma’s bitch. He decides to go back and try his older brother’s approach. He (according to Bailey) has not repented and not converted, he’s working a new plan of self-salvation. What happens? His father, protecting him from the impending “cutting off” ceremony anticipated by the village elders, rushed out to meet the son and embraces him. The son doesn’t even have time to hatch his plan. He like the lost coin and the lost sheep has to simply receive the father’s grace and he is saved.
The older son, however, now receives the word of the younger son’s return when he is also “out in the field”. This is the moment of crisis for his own brand of self-salvation. The older brother is now also on the road back to the house, hearing the party already beginning. The father goes out to him too wanting to embrace him, in his case not needing to protect him from the cutting off ceremony, but the older son is not ready to receive the father’s embrace. He is angry. He has been working religion all his life and done it flawlessly and his main complaint against the father is that he is unfair. He HAS been karma’s bitch, doing his duty, keeping the commandments of the father and what has he gotten out of it? The other brother got the worldly joy ride and all he got was callouses on his hands from hard work. The parable ends with the cliff hanger. Will he receive the father’s gracious embrace?
Gospel vs. religion. You can’t earn an inheritance it is yours because of your father, but you can reject it. What is the danger of religion? Religion is dangerous because it is the reinforcing of probably the most vigorous defense that we have against God’s love, our own righteousness. It is of course a sham, because we’re not as righteous as we think. We imagine that God grades on a curve and if we stand next to pedophiles and genocidal dictators we’ll look pretty good. Religion is more deadly and devious than worldliness which is a point that Jesus drives home again and again with is accusers. See the other parable of the two sons. Tax collectors sell their ethnic allegiance and insider information to the oppressor for money and power. Prostitutes sell their bodies for money. The chief priests have been selling their God and the symbols of God’s redemption for money and power. Tax collectors and prostitutes (like the younger son) have allowed the father to embrace them and then enter the kingdom before the chief priests and the elders.
Gospel makes you free. Religion makes you karma’s bitch. Gospel makes you grateful, religion makes you demanding after your rights and weary trying to protect and assert them. Gospel makes you able to love your enemy, religion makes you defensive. Gospel makes you free to confess your sins and short comings, religion makes you deceive and pretend. Gospel can make you truly good, religion can only make you comply and behave for the religious show you need to maintain.
Is "inspiration" really so distasteful to moderns?
I was reading some of Ben Witherington’s response to Ehrman’s latest book. There’s a huge amount of complaint against the Bible that it is somehow offensive and wrong that Christians imagine this book to be authoritative and seek to use it to serve as a guide. There’s always a lot of energy spent on proving that there can be no such thing as God speaking to us through a book. It seems to me that critics are spending their energy poorly. They don’t really have a practical problem with a book being authoritative and special, they really just don’t like a lot of what’s in it.
Everyone has their own little list of books that they imagine to be “inspired” in one way or another. They might object that they don’t imagine these books are “inspired” in the same way a Christian regards that word, but I’m not so sure. Every Christian I’ve ever known with the highest regard for Scriptural inspiration does implicit editing and prioritizing regarding what they find most gripping in the Bible and what they pursue with highest vigor. They might not consciously say “oh, I don’t like that”, that would cause too much doctrinal dissonance. They just turn to a portion they like better and leave the bits they aren’t as attached to.
Secularists that scoff at Christian devotion to this ancient library use their own texts in ways very similar to Christian texts. They appeal to authors and works and imagine that reality is expressed and exposed vividly in these works more so than in others. They have reasons of their own for imagining that the words that appeal to them are special and marvelous.
One difference seems to be that the secular approach stumbles and staggers as a narrative. What Christians do when they devote themselves to the study of this library is enter into a dialogue with many others who have devoted themselves to the same process. There are definitely huge variations of how they interpret, understand and apply what they read, but there is a line that is traveling through time. This of course isn’t unique to Christianity, but it I think exposes a certain poverty of narrative for secularists. We are all subject to the prison of the here and the now but these religious disciplines afford temporary furloughs to commune with a wider variety of times, places and individuals. Secularists are of course free to make their own forays and to develop their own avocations surrounding persons and areas of interest, but it doesn’t have the same sort of constancy or grip on their lives nor is it done withing a context of a broad contemporary community.
It also seems to me that our tradition’s assertion of organic inspiration also stands up well to critique. Notions of dictation involved with the Koran or the book of Mormon always strike me as at odds with general revelation. The Christian God is a pretty stealthy character. Apart from some brief flair-ups in the desert journey from Egypt to Canaan, and some vivid apocalyptic visions God pretty continually uses the cosmic furniture of matter to talk, relate, reveal and move. This gets epitomized in the incarnation, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. Imagining the library creating a three thousand year narrative community came to be through a fully historical, wandering process seems part of the same whole. It didn’t fall from the sky. Champions of accounting for nature through biological processes should feel quite at home with this idea. Critiquing the contents of the library by pointing out the very human processes of its