Re: The Bible's authority: / how to read the Bible / homosex..

[Herb Davis]

 

 

From: Herb Davis

Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2012 3:56 PM

To: confessi...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: The Bible's authority: / how to read the Bible / homosex..

 

Dear Willis,  I think Harry Emerson Fosdick would be proud of your way of reading the Bible.  I think we have been reading the Bible like that for a long time.  I assume we always read the Bible thru our context.  I sense that you think if we  read the Bible thru your lens we will get it right on sexuality.  I don’t think Wright, Hayes or Jensen or Pannenberg are imprisoned in the Bible but they are not in agreement with you.  I don’t think science is very helpful at least their solution in the 1920’s was an embarrassment. 

 

It is not just being free in the Bible that is critical but what we are bound to that is also important.  I assume we are all bound to something and never get it right.  We need to be careful that our freedom in the Bible does not end being captive of culture.  The church’s response to sexuality has never been great and we certainly cannot be proudof  our past in relation to homosexuals.  But the present response maybe more bound to Rawls understanding of justice than to scripture, to individual autonomy a great American tradition rather than the great tradition.

 

I think we are in a time when the Spirit is calling us to rethink our teaching, as you suggested “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Lu 24:27 “when he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened”  Rather than asking the “scripture only folks” to leave their understanding of the Bible at the door I think we need to invite all to bring their captive to culture, tradition, liturgy and Bible to the table and talk and debate and listen to scripture and break bread and pray and maybe we will understand.  Or maybe the main line churches do have it right, maybe they are freed in the Bible and we should follow them.  I am still a hold out.  Herb   

 

   

 

From: Willis E. Elliott

Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 11:12 PM

To: CC

Subject: Fw: The Bible's authority: / how to read the Bible / homosex..

 

 

Fellow-Confessors

 

As you know the homosex-&-the-Bible issue continues to tear up mainline denominations.  And I continue to try to help pastors who are themselves torn up by it inwardly as well as in their work.

 

Here's part of a recent email from a pastor pleading with me for help on the issue:

 

I have come to the conclusion as to why the homosexuality issue is such a "deal-breaker" for many. If something that is so apparently clear in scripture is not to be believed, then what is? Are the skeptics to be believed? Is there nothing we can know for sure? Everything relative? No absolute truth? Is it just as valid to make it up as we go along? If this foundational understanding of God's design for our lives and his standards of behavior are no longer valid, then our significant world-view crumbles. It is overwhelming to consider the world as a place where the God of scripture is nothing like we understand him to be. Where then can any of us stand? "God" help us if Christopher Hutchins is correct after all.

Dear....

 

....I pray you'll find helpful at least something in my response to you.

1

For its whole history, Islam has viewed the Qur'an as sacred in the sense of untouchable in the sense of uncriticizable.  If a believer disagrees with anything in it, that is taken to mean total rejection of it and Islam: disagree with anything in it, & you've turned yourself into an infidel.  This form of anti-intellectualism is called the all-or-nothing fallacy (or totalism, or the slippery slope, or the domino effect, the either/or fallacy).  Blasphemy!  This anti-thought is fear-driven: touch a wrong key, & the computer will crash!

2

Fear, not faith.  The apocalyptic genre of literature used this fear to damn anybody who in any way changes the text - e.g., Rev.22.18 (adds) & 19 (subtracts).  This concluding formula is the apocalyptist's way of (1) asserting that what he's written is indeed "revelation" (Latin for "unveiling," for which the Greek is "apocalypse"), & (2) protecting the purity of his text.  Christians of extreme fundamentalist persuasion apply this formulaic cursing not just to Rev. but to the whole Bible - in ironic parallel to Islam's sacral protection of the Qur'an.

3

I hope you sense that in the above, I'm addressing your biblical sacrality, the untouchability of the Bible's ideas in morality: either you agree with the Bible against homosexuality, or you throw out the Bible with Christopher Hitchens.  I'm putting it baldly & boldly, but your second paragraph does put all the Bible's eggs into one basket labeled "homosexuality": if the Bible is wrong on homosexuality, how can we argue that it's right about anything?  ln this thinking, you are like a gambler who risks all on one throw of the dice.  In this, your thinking is the same as that of atheist homosexuals, who dispose of the whole of Scripture (& of Christianity) on the basis of its anti-homosexual texts.  The irony is that those who say a biblical no to homosexuality are canceling the Bible not only for most homosexuals but for most American children, whose minds are public-school-captive to egality (the sacred form of multicultural egalitarianism): faithfulness to biblical literalism assures that America's children will not be faithful to the Bible.  This is the ground-issue of church infighting on homosexuality.

4

The Bible uses its religion to promote & sanction (support, motivate to) the ethics, morals, customs of its provenance.  This use of religion is universal: in human beings, the religious & moral minds are - though distinguishable in thought - inseparable in action.  But the very inseparability of thought/action involves mutual variability: a change in either changes the other.  When either morals or theology tightens/loosens, the other tightens/loosens; or morals re-tighten if theology does not loosen (i.e., the person "repents"); or theology re-tightens if morals retighten.  (Pathologically, one may compartmentalize thought/action, with one tight & the other loose.  This abnormal behavior is compensatory, a tight side giving pseudo-stability to compensate for the destabilizing effects of  the loose side.)

5

The Bible teaches us how to sort all this out.  God says both don't eat pigs (Lev.) & eat pigs (Ac.10; cp.M.7.19).  (That's [dietary]  customs with legal support).  God says both hate your enemies & (Jesus) "Love your enemies."  (That's ethics.)  God says both no homosex & faithful body-&-soul one-to-one commitments.  (That's morals.)  Conclusion: In all these instances, believe the second (i.e., later) thing God says.  /  A radical contrast to the Qur'an: In disagreeing with itself, the Bible models our disagreeing with it.  Since it was written by reps of two competing religions, how could it not disagree with itself?  How could Jesus not have said, "You have heard..., but I say to you...."?  The Bible-makers (who bound together the founding documents of the two religions) understood revelation as a process, not (as in Islam) an event (an angel's communication to one person over a brief period of time - so the Qur'an-makers did not bind together OT / NT / Qur'an).

6

Given the nature of Scripture as the literary result of a self-critical revelational process, I've long taught the Three Freedoms of biblical hermeneutics;

    freedom IN the Bible, knowing it

    freedom WITH the Bible, using it

    freedom FROM the Bible, not letting it use you (as the Qur'an uses Muslims).  Galileo had the facts, but his repressors had the Bible (& let it use them, against science). l You have been letting the Bible use you against all homosex despite the fact that this sexual preference is now know to be a natural comparative underdevelopment - &, to the extent of natural, not a preference at all but a "given" condition - "comparative" meaning minor (90% being hetero).  (I have a natural comparative defect: I tend to see & write numbers backwards.  It may be a combo of nature/nurture: early in K-12, I was forced to write with my right hand, & wrote all numbers & words backwards, right to left.  Left-handedness is a "comparative" defect in that the condition is minor [90% being right-handed].)

7

The (Presbyterian) editor of the Christian Century said, ina recent editorial, that after 30 years of debating the ordination of homosexuals, his denomination has decided to dump the issue downstairs - my wording, but you get the idea: sub-national judicatories are to decide the issue for themselves.  Immediately, 100 churches left the denomination on the ground that the Bible is clear on the issue, & the national church muddied it, acting against the Bible.  It reminds me of the slogan of American history's "Christian" church movement slogan:  "Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent."  (That slogan fought on the wrong side in our Civil War.)

8

You well state the same perplexity: "If something  that is so apparently clear in scripture is not to be believed, then what is?"  Maybe a short list will help you see the illogic of your statement: (1) The Bible clearly says God commanded genocide, but you don't believe he did; (2) At the Last Supper, Jesus clearly commanded the custom of foot-washing, but you don't believe the church was wrong to find it too inconvenient; & the same for (3) "baptism" (which in the original can only mean immersion, & which Jesus clearly commands at the end of Mt.).  (4) The Bible clearly says (Ps.6.5) that once you're dead, you won't be able to remember God; but you don't believe it.  (5) The Bible (Paul!) clearly says women are not made in the image of God (1Cor.11.7), but you don't believe it.  (6) The Bible clearly says the sun was stopped so the day could be lengthened so a battle could be won; but you don't believe it.  (6) The Bible clearly says the Son is subordinate to the Father, but you (& I) believe in the Trinity of co-equal Persons....you get the idea.  The question then becomes, How is the Bible authoritative, seeing that in some few instances it's clearly wrong & other few instances what it teaches is not followed by the churches?:

8.1

On the Bible's authority, the two categories of Bible-ignorant believe (1) the Bible is a hoax & (2) it's perfect (authoritative in science, history, commanded behavior, & faith).  That leaves three categories of degrees of Bible-informed: the Bible is authoritative in (3) history / commanded behavior / faith; in (4) commanded behavior / faith; in (5) faith /  commanded behavior in conformity to the character & will of God.  Mine is position No.5, which is primarily about what the Bible is primarily about, viz. faith-trust in the biblical God.  I repeat: The Bible is authoritative in what the Bible is primarily about.  (For any book, could a reasonable case be made for wider authority?)

8.2

Everything in the Bible is hung on the clothesline of "faith," "the Faith."  And everything on the clothesline is important to understanding & living the Faith.  Instead of a clothesline, Jesus' metaphor is a hook on which the Bible (his "the law and the prophets") all hangs (*krem-* [Lat., *pend-*]): Mt.22.40 (the hook [in the previous three verses] being the commandment to love God / neighbor / self).

8.3

I've no doubt that Jesus was that radical.  Everything in Scripture de-pends, hangs, on the triple-love hook, which is the ethical criterion of authentic faith.  Of the four Evangelists (Gospel authors), Mt. is both the most Bible-quoting & the only one recording the radical hook.  (What, now, does love have to say to an unfaithful hetero couple & a faithful homo couple?)  /  The Luke parallel (10.25-28) emphasizes the ethical ("do").  /  The Mark parallel (15.28-34) puts the ethical above the liturgical ("whole burnt offerings and sacrifices").

9

You put very well indeed the threat many Christians feel when told that homosexuality is "natural" rather than a chosen sexual preference.  Every human being is born "naturally" imperfect, with a number of defective genes; some are born "naturally" underdeveloped (e.g., Christopher Hitchens in religious sensitivity) or blind or deaf or lame.  To blame a human being for a "natural" imperfection is ignorant if unknowing (as in Paul's case on homosex in Ro.1) or, if knowing, cruel.  (In Ro.1, Paul cites no scriptural support for his condemnation of homosex; his sole support is the Stoic sanction of nature (what's "un/natural" - & science has knocked out that support).

10

Science can knock out nothing essential to Christian faith, & scientism (philosophical positivism, dogmatic materialism, historicism) knocks out everything essential to Christian faith (revelation; creation; incarnation; Jesus' atoning death / resurrection / ascension / sending of the Holy Spirit [Pentecost, Church], return [the full-come Kingdom of God]; the Trinity [as at the end of Mt.]).  /  Also true is the reverse: Religion can knock out nothing essential to science.

11

On our computers recently, Loree & I read some meditations of our Chinese daughter-in-law sent by  her husband.  We cut/pasted her Chinese into "Google Translate" (translate.google.com) for almost instant two-column (Chinese/English) pages.  (She has been a Christian less than four years.)  I quote a little here to give you her sense of what is authoritative about the Bible: "I have been redeemed, forgiven, [have] receive[d] the riches of His grace."  (God's) "Life is the source of all life, and can give people eternal life."  "This Book [the Bible] will preserve the truth; find out why it will be our confidence and the source of spiritual power surge."  /  The Chinese church (with no leadership from the West) has taught her how to read the Bible.

12

Appropriate to new contexts of space (geography) & time (periods), people have had to learn to re-read the Bible.  The last chapter of Luke speaks of "two of Jesus' followers" learning from him to read the Bible in light of Messiah's suffering - "explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (24.27).  The same author speaks of an Ethiopian Jew who, while reading Isaiah 53.7-8 (in Greek), was asked by Philip "'Do you understand what you are reading?'" (Ac.8.30)  Answer: "'How can I, unless someone instructs me?'"  "So beginning with this same Scripture, Philip told him the Good News about Jesus."  In Luke-Acts, you are to read the OT with updated (Christian) eyes.  Without this christological exegesis, the  OT would not have made it into "the [Christian] Bible".  Jews, of course, consider this Christian reading of their Hebrew Scriptures too radical a pesher (re-visioning, in light of unexpected historical changes).  Christians respond that "the Christ Event" (the whole Jesus Story from incarnation to consummation) not only justifies the pesher but requires it, & the pesher update saves the  (Jewish) Scriptures from rejection by Christians.  /  I am saying to you that today, many Christians are rejecting the Bible because they've not been instructed in its updates.  Ironically, Christians who reject the updates (as you do in the case of homosexuality) are making it easy for other Christians to reject the Bible.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott