MetaCatholic

In the OS wars, the question of which is more “intuitive” gets asked a lot. Mac users claim that OS X is clearly more “intuitive” than Windows. My early experience would suggest that “intuitive” is a matter of what you’re used to. Windows seemed quite intuitive to me, and I’m sure that in a couple of weeks OS X will too.

Let me give a couple of examples. And the beauty of this is that eve if I’m wrong, and there is a better and easier way to do what I wanted, it proves my point about intuitiveness.

I wanted to add a graphic of my real signature to my email signature in Mail. I looked everywhere I could think of for an “insert picture” command, and failed miserably. OK, Mac is supposed to be famous for drag and drop, so I tried that and it worked. Different methods, and what you’re used to will be more intuitive. I don’t think either is quicker or easier than the other.

The signature graphic was a different size to what I wanted. How then did I resize it, short of zooming over to Windows and opening it in Photoshop. (NB When I say resize, I mean resize and resample the actual file, not make it look larger or smaller in the document.) The obvious answer, I thought, would be the famed iPhoto. Nope, there may be a way, but of so, I couldn’t find it. Almost by accident, while looking for something else, however, I discovered the option to resize and resample an image in Preview. (Incidentally, Preview is a real gem, and at the heart of some of the “must have” easy working features of the Mac.) Now call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s remotely intuitive to be unable to resize files in a photo editor, but dead easy in an application intended for previewing them.

I have no idea how you could objectively measure “intuitiveness”. Everyone comes with their own habits, experience and preconceptions. The OS wars: when you take the passionate believers out, there’s still no neutral objectivity. Now where I have I heard that before?

written by doug

… any better than anyone else. (And worse than liberal catholics!)

I’m not sure how I missed news of this news conference, but I don’t recall seeing it discussed. Apologies if I’m going over old ground. This is the most interesting summary:

Fundamentalists, or those who take a literal view of Scripture, do not know more about the Bible than anyone else. In fact, researchers said, it’s readers whose attitudes they described as “critical,” meaning that they see the Bible as the word of God but in need of interpretation, who are over-represented at the highest levels of Biblical literacy. In other words, fundamentalists actually score lower on basic Biblical awareness.

But this observation runs it a close second:

There is no apparent correlation between reading the Bible and any particular political orientation. In other words, it’s not the case that the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely they are to be a political conservative or liberal.

I’d love to see the questions that were actually asked and the methodology employed. If true, however, it may suggest very controversially that not only does “believing the Bible” function as a shibboleth rather than anything else, but that the scriptures may exercise very little power over the biblically literate and illiterate alike. If Bible reading and knowledge has no correlation with political affiliation, that would seem to be suggested.

written by doug

I note that in a fairly interesting interview (HT Peter Kirk who quotes with approval, and Jim West who quotes it with disapproval) Ben Witherington says this:

my view is that everything has to be sifted by the word of God and so theology is a second order task. You don’t start with your theology and then do exegesis, you start with exegesis and you construct or deconstruct a theology as necessary

He is not alone in asserting that this is the right order of things, and by implication that this is what he does.

However it seems to me that “everything has to be sifted by the word of God” is a theological statement governing his use of scripture. Both the statement itself, and the application of the term “word of God” to a specific list of 66 books cannot be reached by exegesis alone. This is THE great evangelical inconsistency, that “scripture before theology” cannot be derived from scripture without doing theology.

written by doug

Since as an Anglican, I’m more used to splitting churches over sex — see how these men love one another. I can’t help but find a certain fascination (to say nothing of Schadenfreude) with the divisive power of inerrancy, currently convulsing Westminster Theological Seminary over the suspension of Peter Enns.

The deep running sense of irony in all this continues. WTS is in Philadelphia, a name easier to live in than live out. But above all, they are defending the Westminster Confession of Faith, and using it to judge whether Enns view of scripture should allow him to teach there. The said confession, used as the yardstick for acceptable interpretation of scripture, says this, of course.

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself (1.9)

Hmm …

written by doug

It has always seemed obvious to me that whenever anyone says “the obvious meaning of this text / word is …” they are about to say something that is far from obvious to everyone else. This thought was prompted (again) by Andrew’s post on I Corinthians 6:9-10 and the words malakoi and arsenokoitai. I would completely agree with him that the meaning of these words is far less certain than most people (for and against particular views) state in their respective arguments. The only thing we can say about them for certain is that they denoted forms of behaviour that Paul regarded as sinful.

It also seems obvious to me, but to very few others as far as I can tell, that Paul is not listing sins that he knew various members of the Corinthian church had previously committed. I think he is drawing on a range of common sins in a vice list which he and other Jews more generally attributed to Gentiles. The force of the argument is to say: “These are the sort of things Gentile sinners do, and some of you used to be Gentile sinners, but now you are called to be God’s people.” Why isn’t this generic use of a vice-list obvious to anyone else?

Arguing that these were the sins of specific individuals in the community, and then deciding what sort of sins Corinth was famous for, and then deducing what the specifics of the vice list mean, seems to me an equally dodgy practice as assigning “obvious” meanings to specific words, when the context doesn’t sufficiently clarify them.

Either way, “obvious” obviously means “tendentious”

written by doug

It is remarkable that new documents from the apostolic age should still come to light, but I’m privileged to offer a rough first draft translation of this newly discovered personal letter from James to Peter. Unfortunately it sheds no additional light on the difficult question of relating Galatians and Acts, but does have a strangely contemporary feel.

James, brother of the Lord to our well-beloved Rock, Peter: grace to you, and peace.

I remind you, brother, of the calling the Lord Jesus gave you, to strengthen the fellowship of his followers. These are dangerous times for the church of Christ in which many are departing from the scriptures and do not care whether they keep the covenant God made with his people. They claim to follow the Spirit of God, but how can they possibly be doing so when they are going against the plain teaching of scripture? Is it not written that when “the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God”, we are to “touch no unclean thing” and “to go out from the midst”?¹ Yet far from going out, they are eating and drinking together in the midst of uncircumcised sinners. How can the Spirit of the one who inspired the scriptures now be guiding people into the ways of disobedience? Is he not the Father of lights, with whom there is no shadow of change? How then can he contradict himself?

Brother, I implore you, uphold the faith and do not let the gates of Hades prevail against us. You say you will invite Saul and a group from Antioch to a conference here in Jerusalem. Will that not be seen as accepting them and their ideas? They are calling clean what God has called unclean. You yourself have been mislead by visions about this very thing. I bless the God of our ancestors that you have returned from the way of error and now no longer share the blessed meal with Gentile sinners. I must tell you in all honesty, brother, that there are those of the Way from among the Pharisees who wonder if you are not too closely associated with Saul, and have not spent too long in Antioch. Only in Antioch, it seems, could such things happen. Yet because of its power in the region it infects us all with its imperialist ways.

Even were it not for these faithful brothers of the Pharisee party, I must tell you that you have disturbed the simple faith of many. Do not forget, my friend, what the days of your fishing life were like, when your worries were simple, and you walked in the ways taught by our rabbis from the Torah. Yes, the coming of Messiah has changed all things, but I fear that we are being caught in the ways of the big city, the temptations of Babylon. Things still look different in the countryside of Galilee, our home, and in the holiness and beauty of Jerusalem, the city of our God. Here we do not have our eyes defiled and our thoughts muddled by the presence of idols.

Do not be misled by Saul. He was over-zealous when he persecuted us, and he is over-zealous now. He simply takes everything too far, and nothing in moderation. Yes, we may rejoice that the Gentiles are turning to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yes, we may rejoice that they will bring their tribute to Messiah’s feet in Jerusalem. But we don’t have to eat with them. They must be summoned to turn from idols, and submit to the covenant of circumcision. Blessed be God who has shown them mercy through the coming of our awaited Messiah.

Do not, I say, be misled by Saul, do not treat him as one equal to us, apostles of the Lord and elders of his church. Calling a conference in which he is seated as equal with us will be a disaster for the church. The Pharisees will leave us, and the simple Galileans and countryfolk will have their faith shaken. The church will fall apart. May it never be so. This proposed council will be a disaster. You were called by the Lord Jesus to be the one on whom he built his church. Do not be the rock on whom it is shipwrecked. How I wish that abortion had never travelled to Damascus. Now he takes us all on the road to disaster.

My brother, remember your calling, and may peace be with you.

1. Ed - James is referring to Isaiah 52:10-11 [↩]

written by doug

James Crossley offers a suggestion that traditional historical and literary critical approaches to the Bible may be approaching their sell-by-date.

Here’s the speculation… The Bible obviously remains culturally popular but, a few exceptions aside, the majority of traditional criticism is limited in its popular appeal and there is some degree of irrelevancy. … The Bible is seriously important in politics and popular culture right now in so many ways and this is not getting studied to anything like the extent that we see in traditional criticism. On the other hand, how long can the NT be studied in the traditional historical sense? Will it soon be done to death?

Jim West, in a response (while he ponders whether to enter the sex shops of Chester and Sheffield) leaps on this with rapacious vigour (no connection with his shopping tour, I’m sure) and takes the idea in a passionate embrace.

To put it in my own words- historical criticism as interpretive method has seen its best days and is now on the decline, heading towards the methodological graveyard where it will be buried, withered, wretched, and depleted of all the life force that once made it vital and vibrant.  But what will replace it?   Something must, because it most certainly is correct that the historical-critical method is now bankrupt and devoid of further usefulness.

I must somewhat demur (especially from Jim’s stronger assertion about James’ speculation), but first let me state where I agree. The wide variety of ways of reading, and studying the reading of scripture that are around are generally to be welcomed. Those ways include feminist, post-colonial, and queer readings among the more ideological, but also bring in aspects of popular culture such as movie and musical interpretation, and studies of the actual use to which people put (and have put) texts.

I would note however, that a wide diversity of older ways of reading and appropriating scripture remain in play. Some forms of literary approaches which discern patterns in the text are reminiscent of typological readings. Devotional readings have always existed side by side with critical readings: today there is more opportunity to bring them into play with each other. Lectio divina is making something of a comeback in spirituality and prayer. Generally, the more the merrier.

But … I think there is still a case to be made for the role of historical criticism. I do not think that a pure reader response criticism will win out in the literary field so that there will always be a sense that texts are communications of meaning and not just repositories for readers to raid. In the historical field this means also that the study of texts as historical artifacts will always remain part of the literary study of ancient texts. The fact that the discipline of biblical studies would not exist without a collection of ancient texts to study means that the disciplines of historical study and literary study will continue to shape the discipline of biblical study. Biblical studies departments may well also make new links with cultural and political studies and so on, but I see this as supplementing and augmenting its long-standing links to historical and literary studies.

Now it may be that I am influenced by my own theological desire to see historical criticism remain a key discipline. I do not mean any particular critical method, but the sense that the text’s fundamental meaning is tied to its historical context, sensitive to its cultural genre and construction, and open to intersubjective exploration of its original meaning. In my view that also enhances the claim of biblical studies to be a public academic discipline. I think, in the end, it will be post-structuralism and its progeny that is seen as intellectually bankrupt, and historically sensitive readings that will continue to be seen as credible, not least because they can be publicly disputed. After all, the roots of the university, long before the rise of the Enlightenment, lie precisely in public disputation and the persuasion of others.

written by doug

I seem to have annoyed a few pacifists, by spelling out both the thinking of the 39 articles, and the thinking of the mainstream tradition about just war. I seem to have particularly annoyed Peter Kirk who describes himself as “very attracted” to pacifism. Despite this attraction to pacifism, he has retaliated by selecting various quotations from my posts, and extracting them from the argument in which they were embedded to make his point.

By contrast I offer the following observations about Christian pacifism as I have encountered it:

• It is often unutterably smug in claiming the moral high-ground, and implying that it is a superior form of Christianity. I suspect half the annoyance with my posts is that I’ve deliberately put the boot on the other foot.
• It is hermeneutically naive in thinking that you can apply Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and non-violent resistance in any direct way to the conduct of government, politics and international relations.
• It is similarly naive in thinking it has proved itself to be traditional Christianity by producing a catena of pre-Nicene quotations, when the pre-Nicene tradition simply didn’t deal with the political relations any more than the New Testament did.
• It appears crypto-Marcionite in the way it sidelines the Old Testament, which does address the concerns of political life, within a particular sense of a national vocation.
• It verges on the immoral by suggesting that any government should say to another country, “you may do what you like to your own citizens, and we will stand by and let you do it. Actually, you can come here and do it to ours as well.” The patterns of non-violent resistance have little to say to international relations. In so far as they have often approved of sanctions, they have acquiesced in punishing the impoverished population of a country, while leaving its tyrannical leadership untouched.
• It seems to me to be increasingly buying into an exclusively Girardian diagnosis of sin and redemption, which is seductive, but in the end fails to take any proper account of alienation from God. Girardian models would work as well if there were no God. I think that makes them an inadequate account.

I can see a place for individual prophetic witness to pacifism as a reminder of the eschatological peace to which we are all summoned, and by which we should measure our own lack of peace today. I do not wish to disrespect the individual, or the monastic community that sees such a witness as their vocation. My complaint is with all of those who try to urge it not only as policy for the whole Church, but who wish to claim it is the only Christian policy at all. In rejecting their views, I have probably gone over the top, but sometimes overstatement makes the point more forcefully, and a blog rant is not a reasoned argument.

written by doug

The inerrancy conversation will probably rumble on. For a summary, see Nick Norelli’s post, or the last paragraph of John Hobbins’ reply. For a very slant-wise look at creeping inerrancy see ElShaddai Edwards on translations. In some respects, however, it is less the formal declaration of inerrancy which is the problem, but rather the literal wooden-mindedness of many of those who adopt this badge.

As well as having so thoroughly claimed the idea of inerrancy as to render it entirely impossible to use the term (sorry, John), “fundamentalists” have also overdosed on claims about the literal sense of scripture. Unfortunately, they have created the impression that reading the literal sense of scripture is the same thing as taking it literally.

Despite claims sometimes put forward that the Reformation restored, or even established, the importance of the literal sense of the text, the importance of the literal sense goes back a long way. Here is St Thomas Aquinas:

Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one — the literal — from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says (Epis. 48). Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense. (ST 1.1.10)

St Thomas accepts the other traditional senses of Scripture: allegorical (by which the Gospel is found in the Old Testament), moral (by which things and events understood christologically signify how we should behave) and anagogical, by which scriptures are related to the final end of all things in glory. However, he clearly subordinates these to the literal sense, saying that no passage may be expounded by any of the other senses to teach something that cannot be found elsewhere in the literal sense.

More importantly, he goes on to explain the literal sense further:

The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power.

The literal sense is not taking things literally. It is slightly unclear whether Aquinas is saying they should not be taken literally if they are not intended to be taken literally, or if they cannot be taken literally. It is certainly true for him that it is impossible that God has an arm. It is perhaps less clear that every use of language either Aquinas or most of us would interpret figuratively was entirely figurative for the original authors. The degree to which, say, OT anthropomorphisms are self-consciously metaphorical is open to question.

This means that the “literal” sense of the text is determined both in a theological framework, and by literary sensitivity to language, rhetoric and genre. It is, sometimes, the exact opposite of taking the text literally. By and large the magisterial Reformers are in continuity with Aquinas on this point. However, by moving away from the other senses, they perhaps desensitise their followers to pluriform readings and multiple meanings of the sort that have only started to emerge again through newer forms of literary criticism. Without that wider hinterland of reading, they may have helped pave the way for taking the literal sense literally.

I suggest that our biggest issue with the inerrantists is not per se their professed belief in inerrancy, but they combine it with a preference for reading the text literally, confusing that with the literal sense, and displaying the literary sensitivity of a Dalek.

written by doug

John Hobbins confesses to being a fundamentalist inerrantist, as he has previously to being a five-point Calvinist. Of course, being John, he immediately offers an interpretation of these terms which is entirely different from anything anyone else commonly means by them. He is, in other words, a Humpty-Dumpty type of inerrantist Calvinist: his words mean precisely what he intends them to mean, and nothing else.

In the comments on his post, he says that by rejecting these words “infallible” and “inerrant”, I “put myself in a corner by myself”:

You deprive yourself of core common vocabulary you might have shared with, for example, contemporary Catholic Christians, as in Roman Catholic, and evangelical Christians of many varieties. You might have argued about how best to use that vocabulary, how best to contextualize it.

Okay, first of all, I accept that a whole range of mainstream theology has used language similar to what John quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.” The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”¹

There is, of course, quite a get out here: the only respect in which the Scriptures are without error are about “that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to” them. Generally such classic statements of inerrancy have included similar provisos. The question is whether, even with such provisos, the language of inerrancy is helpful today (even when appropriately contextualised).

I don’t think it is.

• I note that John can’t really appeal to Rome for this statement, unless he also wishes to accept the context within which Rome makes that statement. The right interpretation of these inerrant Scriptures is a Church which guided by them also teaches without error in respect of faith and morals. Their “inerrancy” is inherently communal. Many of us who remain outside the Roman fold do so at least in part because of our inability to accept this.
• The mainstream of patristic treatments as well as those of later Catholic and Orthodox tradition that teach this kind of limited inerrancy teach it about more books than John (denominationally) accepts as Scripture. It is an odd thing to seek to maintain their teaching about the Scriptures, while not accepting some of the books they teach it about. Indeed, the question of the Canon (about which John knows a great deal) throws up a significant problem for any teaching about inerrancy. Whose inerrancy, and which books?
• The problem for Protestants of every stripe is a multiplication of the Roman solution. In practice a vast many people identify their interpretation of Scripture with Scripture itself. Asserting the inerrancy of scripture is all too often a way of asserting one’s own infallibility, or the infallibility of one’s own tradition, often denying that interpretation or tradition have got anything to do with what is plainly (!) the inerrant teaching of Scripture.
• Finally, and in the end most significantly (for all of the previous problems could, I think, be more-or-less adequately addressed) words depend for their meaning on usage. Here, the clear everyday meaning of “inerrant” has been taken over by a late-Enlightenment “scientific” attitude to facts and data by the fundamentalists, to interpret Scripture not as a literary text but as a mix of encyclopedia and almanac, which offers an alternate “science” based on an entirely different set of “facts” of revelation. This construction of Scripture is diametrically opposed to those traditionally associated with the idea that they do not err when guiding us towards salvation, because it has stripped out all the communal and relational aspects of reading them.

John quotes St Augustine as saying:

I dare to believe that none of them has erred in writing; and I do not doubt that if I come upon anything in them which seems contrary to the truth it is nothing but either a faulty codex or that the expounder has not comprehended what has been said or that I have not understood it.

However, Augustine, like the other fathers, had in his armoury a whole range of interpretative method, not the least of which was allegorising, which allowed him to perform all sorts of subtle moves with the text which brought it into line with what could be plainly known of the world through philosophy and the science of the day. Many of our own forms of literary criticism may allow us to do the same. In doing so, however, we often do precisely the opposite of what those most fond of the language of inerrancy believe should be done.

This suggests that the language of inerrancy serves no purpose which may not be equally, or indeed better served, by using words like authoritative, trustworthy, normative and inspired. Or indeed, the one that is used in Second Timothy: “useful”. These say something about how we relate to Scripture, relying on it, wrestling with it, discerning ourselves and our world by it, and living in the light of its story. That seems to me a lot more sensible than holding on to an older vocabulary which has so changed its meaning that it serves as little more than a badge of obscurantist inclusion and exclusion.

At the end of the film Wargames Joshua (the computer that has nearly blown up the world by playing what it “thought” was the game Thermonuclear War) says: “A strange kind of game. The only winning move is not to play.” That is exactly how I feel about John’s challenge to contextualise the language of inerrancy.

1. Pt 1, Sec 1, Ch 2, art 3 107-8 — The quotations are from Dei Verbum [↩]

written by doug