A Response to Jacob

The following post is a continuation of a conversation that began http://russellcravens.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/my-thoughts-on-tattoos/#comments

went to http://jacobeck.wordpress.com/ and continues below. 

In an effort to keep it as close to conversation as possible I have copied Jacob’s entire post and responded throughout.  I have known Jacob for many years and this is one of many conversations about these types of things.  Join the conversation if you can speak the truth in love, admit your own biases, and are willing to be teachable.

It is such a long post I feel that I need a thesis statement.   This post will show that disagreements do exit in the Christian community and that healthy dialogue can and should be had by speaking the truth in love, admitting falibility, and recognizing one’s own potential for bias.

Russell: I love you brother and I appreciate your invitation into dialogue.  I have thought about how to respond to this for a few days.  I am not sure that “debate” will be fruitful.  No doubt, you have spent a significant amount of time listening to and thinking about these concerns about conservative biblical interpretation.  The scope of this conversation is really wide, so I think I will just comment on a few things that came to mind as I read your post.  Then, I will pose a question at the end that I am most interested in.

Jacob: I think that Michael makes a great point. When we approach any piece of literature, it is most beneficial to us when we read it in the category of literature that it belongs. This allows the text to be true to its original purpose.

Russell: True.

Jacob: Our vice is that we do not allow this to happen for most of Scripture. 

Russell: I do not understand how your assertion that we do not consider the genre of literature rightly has anything to do with whether or not Genesis 1-11 is reliable.  Genesis 1-11 is a piece of literature (just like everything that is written in the Bible).  The mistake we make (maybe) is in deciding what type of literature it is.  I am persuaded that the entire Bible is a narrative of sorts.  However, within the Bible exists historical narratives (the majority of the Old Testament), poetry, apocryphal writings, and epistles.  Properly understanding these books in the context of their genre helps us see the overall narrative; that is, the Bible tells the story of a God who is primarily concerned about His glory and vindicates His own righteousness by rescuing people mercifully. 

Jacob: The stories of Genesis which occurred prior to Abraham are good examples of this.  These stories cannot be held accountable by enough geological or scientific evidence for one to confidently say they are thoroughly historically accurate documents to any significant degree. 

Russell: I am not overly concerned with trying to verify the accuracy of everything I believe in by geological or scientific evidence.  Whether or not you realize it, this type of thinking is a production of the earliest period of Modernity called the Enlightenment.  Oversimplified, it was a period when mystery (art and beauty) began to be divorced from truth by intellectual assent.  So, anything that was not scientifically provable or intellectually calculable was relegated to the category of “not true.”   There are serious ramifications for a lot of beautiful things when we begin to intellectualize things that are true outside of our ability to intuit them intellectually (I have in mind here things like romantic love).  (When I have time I am going to write something on my blog about this, because not only am I concerned about the possibility of this influence in your thinking but I also see it popping up time and time again with those that view the Bible as literally true.) 

Jacob: Sociologically, these ancient Hebraic “Beginning” stories are quite similar to several others.

Russell: I am aware of this truth (i.e. Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh Late 3^rd Millenium BC, et al). 

Jacob: Each of these was commonly held to as a narrative and should still be if the original purpose is to be maintained. After all, how miraculous is it that an ancient Hebraic people could develop such a beautifully written copy of the story from such an elaborate oral tradition! I find that the truth of God working in and through humanity is much more evident when we recognize that God truly allowed and used a people’s story to depict elements of God’s own being! 
Russell: I agree.  Jumping ahead, I think we have a hard time understanding how reliable an oral tradition in the Ancient Near East truly was.  I have a hard time remembering the details of a story I heard this morning, but there seems to be every indication that the oral tradition (and reliability) can be trusted.  More trustworthy, though, is the reliability of Sovereign God “keeping the facts straight” in the mind of those passing the true narratives of God revealing Himself to pre-patriarchal forefathers.  This is mysterious and stands outside of provable scientific fact.   

Jacob: Just because a piece of literature is a narrative, that does not mean that truth is absent from it, or that it cannot be “inspired”.

Russell:  I can only assume that you are assuming that I doubt that these earliest Hebrew texts can be viewed as true in their narrative forms.  I view every word as a reliable part of the narrative which does what it was intended to do; that is, Genesis 1-11 is intended to introduce the Problem and Genesis 12-50 (and  the rest of the OT) is intended to introduce the Answer. 

Jacob: I believe that our inability to understand the power of an ancient Hebraic narrative further hinders us from understanding any 1st or 2nd century text, especially the Gospels, that we consider to be the New Testament. 

Russell: I agree that it is may be difficult to understand any world haven’t lived in (and maybe even the one we do live in), but I do think it is possible to understand it to the degree that we need to for an accurate understanding of the Biblical accounts written during it.  Hence, it is important that every sincere Christian be careful students.   

Jacob: It didn’t take 2000 years for Christians to begin to misunderstand the purpose of these early Christian texts that were still so deeply rooted into the Hebraic or Judaic narrative. 

Russell: Throughout the 2000 years since the life of Jesus, there has always been a pattern of conservative biblical interpreters starting as the minority increasing in number and eventually becoming a group of more moderate (even liberal) in biblical interpretation.  Within this group has always been a group of reformers who “broke away” not just to buck the system but because they believed in the reliability of the texts in their purest form.  The most notable of these groups is what we know as the Reformers (Martin Luther).  I say all this to argue against what it sounds like you are saying; that is, the further we get from the actual events the more unreliable our ability to get to the intended truth of the Scripture (interpretive entropy-my phrase).  

Jacob: The early Church father Tertullian penned Christianity’s frantic attempts to manipulate Hebraic texts in De Cultu Feminarum where he writes “Nothing whatever must be rejected by us which pertains to us…”. From this ideal, Tertullian and countless others began to swallow any literary metaphor that could possibly be speaking about the Christ, regardless of how inconsistent the source might have been. 

Russell:  Are you suggesting that Tertullian influenced the collection of NT writings with the bias of wanting to “make” Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?  With this line of reasoning I can only assume that you do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth (and the New Testament writings that identify Him as Messiah) is not actually the highly anticipated Messiah, God the Son.  Additionally, I am not overly familiar with the document by Tertullian you referenced, but I do know that Tertullian lead out during a time when what many had already held to be true began being question severely by Gnosticism (which is a big umbrella term for a varying degrees of what we see the beginnings of in Colossians) and Montanism.  I would argue that Orthodox Christianity came first then heretical views.  So, Tertullian and others did not come up with a new way of thinking; instead, they articulated via the Rule of Faith what was already identified as true but needed to be clearly articulated with the threat of the  type of thinking you hold.    

Jacob: By the 4th century CE many of these were being sifted through and revealed for their inconsistencies as the New Testament began to be solidified, but the damage had been done. Christianity had become far more than twice removed from the ability to truly understand the way in which these texts were written.

My Thought:  I am not sure what “many of these” is talking about.  Throughout this conversation, though, I have wondered how much faith we have in God’s capacity to preserve the Biblical record as He intended it.    

Jacob:  Scripture can still be trusted, that is not my point. My point is that Michael touched on what I believe to be one of the problems with the conservative approach that you suggest. Scripture is interpreted differently today not merely because we are in a different time, but because we do not even understand how a narrative (or any other literary device utilized by the authors of the text) can be truly “inspired”; in the conservative meaning of the word.

This is also why, I believe, there is an incredibly large population of Christians that see Scripture as becoming more and more irrelevant as long as it is understood within this conservative approach.

Russell:  What Scripture do you think we can trust?  In what way are you suggesting we approach that Scripture?  How does that change or affirm an orthodox view of Christianity?