MetaCatholic

Claude Mariottini started something with his interview with Jim West when he said that:

Atheists cannot be good interpreters of the Bible because they already begin with the assumption that the Bible is a bunch of nothing.

Duane Smith picked up on this and disagreed strongly. Claude replied. Now another atheist Chris Hallquist, in a more mocking manner has also attacked Claude’s position, and Claude has again replied, a little more heatedly. Perhaps the key idea he wants to get across is illustrated by this:

Atheists can read and interpret the Bible from a historical, sociological, linguistic, or mythological perspective. Christians, on the other hand, read the Bible from a historical, sociological, linguistic perspective, but also from the perspective of faith and religion. For instance,
1. Atheists can study the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, but they cannot love God with all their heart, soul and strength.

Herein, I think, lies the problem. For the Christian, the Bible is a book that is read and interpreted in continuity with the faith they hold, as affirming, and in some sense usually authorizing that faith as (at least) a foundational document. Thus statements about loving God, or indeed being loved by God, both interpret and are interpreted by the contemporary Christian experience, and very often the community of faith’s interpretation of that experience over the centuries. Belief that faith in God is a prerequisite for a proper and full understanding of scripture is itself an article of faith.

By contrast, for the atheist, whether campaigning (”evangelistic”) as Chris Hallquist appears to be, or non-campaigning as Duane Smith appears to be, the Bible is read as a book of historical import. Since they do not believe either in God, or that statements asserting God’s existence are justified, it must follow that the correct interpretation of the Bible is as a witness to human myth-making, historical development, and literary reflection on existence, and any interpretation which continues to affirm the existence of the God described in the scriptures is at best misguided.

In other words, at one level, both atheist and Christian believe themselves to be the better interpreter of the Bible, and the other to be less able to read it for what it truly is. At another level, there is a great deal of common ground in historical, literary and other studies, that mean both can, in principle, learn from the other. there is also the possibility of real dialogue where one can say to another: “I read it this way in the light of my experience and (dis)belief; how do you, with your different commitments read this text.”

I should have thought that where honest and open dialogue like this is possible, the Christian should be the more pleased to find that atheists wish to enter any dialogue about ways of reading scripture. It may be the more fruitful, since at least some of the many atheists in the Western world became atheists because they could no longer be fundamentalists. Starting from the viewpoint that you need the Holy Spirit but not your brain  to read scripture (which is not what Claude is saying, but may be how he has been heard) may not be the best way to initiate or sustain such dialogue.