Jezebel in Thyatira: Join Our Sunday School Class to Learn the Deep Teachings of Satan!

May 13, 2012 By James F. McGrath 4 Comments

Today in my Sunday school class we continued our study of Revelation. In looking at the message for the church in Thyatira, we considered the figure of Jezebel, and why the author of Revelation might have labeled a certain prophetess in that church by the name of the famous/infamous Phoenician princess by that name, whose story is told in 1-2 Kings.

Revelation had previously connected the teaching in another church with Balaam. In both cases, the name of a hated and maligned figure from the Hebrew Bible is applied to an opponent. In both instances, the accusation centers on the eating of food sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality. It is possible that the latter is meant metaphorically, in keeping with the long prophetic tradition of comparing the worship of other gods with adultery.

The prophetess who is nicknamed Jezebel is also associated with teachings described as the “deep things of Satan.”

In class, I mentioned that, no matter how liberal a teacher in a church or a congregation might be, it is unlikely that anyone would have been bringing idols into the church and offering animal sacrifice to them, or that there would be a Sunday school class with a sign on the door saying “Today’s lesson: the Deep Teachings of Satan.”

Most likely, these are polemical charactizations by someone who disagrees with them – like the characterization of the opponents in the Dead Sea Scrolls as “sons of Beliar” or in the Gospel of John as “of your father the Devil.” Whatever “Jezebel” was teaching, it must have been something that could genuinely be considered a legitimate form of Christianity by a significant number of Christians.

If we ask how she and those who supported her might have characterized themselves, perhaps it was rather like Paul does in 1 Corinthians, emphasizing that the mature can grasp that an idol is nothing, and that there is no harm in eating any food for which thanks has been given to God. Perhaps it was a bit more like those because of whom Paul wrote in that letter, with whom he agreed in principle but whose disregard for the conscience of others troubled him.

When a religious minority navigates life in a context that is very different and perceived as hostile, such challenges inevitably arise. The worship of the gods was a matter not merely of an occasional observance in a temple, but also official and public activities, meals, and many other aspects of daily life.

Perhaps then as now there are some who would regard any acceptance of interaction with practices that are not Christian as “compromise” of a sort that was unacceptable. But it is thanks to those who were willing to risk “compromise” that Christianity survived and thrived, flourishing down to the present day.

Fundamentalists need to consider the shocking possibility that the very fact that Christianity reached them, and the form that it took on its way to doing so, may owe more to those whom the author of Revelation characterized as idolaters and adulterers and proponents of the “deep teachings of Satan” than to the author of Revelation, whose own work was viewed with suspicion by significant numbers of Christians throughout most of the church’s history.

 

Filed Under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Progressive Christianity, Revelation Tagged With: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Time for the End of the Sectarian University?

May 7, 2012 By James F. McGrath 3 Comments

Churches have long been instrumental in the establishment of universities. Some of the most prestigious secular universities of the present day in the United States – whether Harvard University, the University of Chicago, or Butler University [wink] – were founded by either churches or people motivated by religion, and had strong religious ties.

But it may be that the time has come for those who consider higher education and research important to take a stand and say that education as it is currently understood is antithetical to having a religious affiliation that demands that employees and/or students sign a statement of faith.

Let me explain.

One of the key features of education is learning to think critically, evaluate evidence, and wrestle with conflicting interpretations. If an institution prohibits professors from advocating a particular viewpoint, then even seeming to advocate that viewpoint will be liable to get one in trouble. And so students will not hear a strong case for whatever that viewpoint is. The issue is not whether that viewpoint is right or wrong. One of the key accomplishments of a well-rounded education is that it forces us to realize that intelligent and well-informed people can at times disagree over the best interpretation to offer or conclusion to draw. When upholding a particular orthodoxy is required to keep one’s job, then on the one hand, the professor is going to be motivated to refrain from playing devil’s advocate when it will be pedagogically useful to provoke students to think about a different perspective, while on the other hand, students and trustees may take the notion of devil’s advocate literally.

Likewise when it comes to research, if one is beholden to particular views in advance, then one may have to choose between following the evidence where it leads – even evidence from the Bible itself – versus keeping one’s job.

And so perhaps we should keep the name university for institutions which espouse genuine and full academic freedom, and require that those which do not be called something else?

Please note that I am not saying that institutions cannot have religious affiliations, but that a distinction must be made between institutions committed above all to education in as broad and full a sense as possible, and those committed first and foremost to upholding and promoting a particular system of thought. There are many churches and individuals who consider it inevitable that whatever one believes, at some point you will doubt it, and consider that it is not helpful to drive those who are going through such inevitable experiences out of their church or school. As Andrea Dilley put it in a recent CNN article, “My doubt belonged in church…My doubt is actually part of my faith.”

Some may already have guessed that my posting on this is motivated by the recent dismissal of Anthony Le Donne. See the posts on this subject around the blogosphere by Christopher Skinner, James Crossley, Jared Callaway, Brian Lewis, Brian LePort, John Hobbins, and Mike Bird, as well as Ben Witherington’s – which one ought to read while keeping in mind the fact that he works at a seminary with a statement of faith. See also the quote from F. F. Bruce in an older post by Tony Jones.

Filed Under: Christianity, education, inerrancy, religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Does Reading the Bible Lead to Atheism? Does Losing Faith Save one from Fundamentalism?

March 3, 2012 By James F. McGrath 23 Comments

Hemant Mehta shared this cartoon about the year after the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania:

Reading the Bible can indeed lead to people losing their faith, if their faith was placed in the Bible, which they believed to be inerrant.

But that is only a natural (or perhaps nearly inevitable) outcome if one has accepted the aforementioned view of the Bible, and placed one’s faith in the Bible, allowing it to become the foundation for one’s faith, despite the Bible’s own insistence that one’s foundation should be elsewhere. If one has been foolish enough to adopt a view of the Bible that one has to defend against evidence from within the Bible itself, then perhaps it is only fair that one’s entire misguided worldview come crashing down at some point. But what remains or is rebuilt from the rubble is often not a significant improvement on what was there before.

It is not merely the combination of wrong beliefs about the Bible, subsequently confronted with evidence from the Bible itself that those beliefs are wrong, that lead to a loss of faith. It is also having one’s faith almost entirely focused on and dependent on the Bible. If there is nothing beyond the Bible that constitutes your “faith,” then when that is taken away as an infallible authority, then obviously nothing remains of one’s faith.

But unfortunately, very often what does remain is the same desire for absolute certainty, the same penchant for dogmatism, the same black-and-white outlook. If those underlying issues are not addressed, then one may merely trade in a toxic and misguided religion for a toxic and misguided atheism.

If, on the other hand, there is more to someone’s faith than inerrant authorities – whether texts, creeds, dogmas, people, or a particular philosophy – then that can often constitute a faith that can survive and thrive as one’s beliefs change. You may or may not still think that what is the ultimate reality is helpfully depicted in personal terms. But you may be able to hang on to faith in the meaningfulness of life, the value of persons, the dangers of reductionism, and much else that, call it what you will, is part of the essence of faith for many whose worldview, whether theistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, panentheistic, atheistic or agnostic, is more than just the sum of their beliefs about religion.

What do readers think? Did your discovery that the Bible is not inerrant lead to a loss of faith for you? Or did your beliefs change, while your “faith” (or whatever you may prefer to call it) grew, evolved, developed and changed in ways that you consider ultimately positive? Please share your own thoughts and experiences!

Filed Under: atheism, Bible, Christianity, fundamentalism, inerrancy, philosophy, Progressive Christianity, religion, theology Tagged With: , , , , , 23 Comments

Biblicism in a Single Image

February 28, 2012 By James F. McGrath 30 Comments

David Hayward has created yet another excellent cartoon:

The irony, of course, is that many Biblicists will not get this, because they cannot envisage a distinction between what God or Jesus says on the one hand, and the Bible on the other.

Filed Under: Bible, Christianity, fundamentalism, humor, inerrancy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 30 Comments

Rick Santorum’s Educational Hypocrisy

January 27, 2012 By James F. McGrath 3 Comments

Lots of people have mentioned Rick Santorum’s outrageous anti-education statement. He said, “It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go college…the indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination.” 

I particularly appreciated Steve Wiggins’ comments, which highlight that the allegedly terrible indoctrinating university educational experience is one that Santorum himself has pursued and profited from:

Santorum earned a Bachelor of Arts, with honors, from the wicked, indoctrinating Pennsylvania State University. He then succumbed again to the indoctrination when he, apparently accidentally, earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. Somehow he stumbled onto a J.D. with honors from Dickinson School of Law. A man this indoctrinated, I say, has no business being president…It is harder to get educated people to march in goose-step with everybody else. Talk about indoctrination! Vote for me, because I will keep you safe from the horrors of an education of which I couldn’t stop my self from taking advantage. Don’t send your kids to law school. There can be real danger even in sending them to grammar school, for there they learn to spell. I wonder, if in the course of earning his three degrees, Mr. Santorum ever learned to spell the word “hypocrite.”

Bob Cargill makes a similar point:

It’s almost comical: Evangelicals don’t want kids to go to America’s top colleges because they might actually learn something besides a fundamentalist, conservative, literalist, theologically-laced worldview, which often leads to a biblically defended suppression of the civil rights of groups that don’t look and/or think like they do. So, from a very early age, they encourage like-minded people to isolate and insulate their kids from any point of view other than their own by placing kids in home schools, private (approved conservative) Christian schools, conservative Christian colleges, and if they do attend graduate school, they often receive some fantastic degree in education, physics, and applied scripture from Southern Evangelical Theological Seminary (I made this title up. If it does exist, my point has only been further underscored.)

So just to clarify:

Public school: Liberal indoctrination
Home school: NOT indoctrination

Public High School: Liberal indoctrination
Christian High School: NOT indoctrination

Public or Ivy League university: Liberal indoctrination
Christian College: NOT indoctrination

R1 Research Graduate School: Liberal indoctrination
Evangelical Theological Seminary: NOT indoctrination

I shake my head.

 

Filed Under: education, fundamentalism, politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Answers in Racketeering (Does Ken Ham Think Noah Was a Millionaire?)

December 21, 2011 By James F. McGrath 9 Comments

P. Z. Myers drew attention to the fact that the infamous Answers in Genesis has hit a snag in their plans for an “ark park.” They aimed to raise $24.5 million for the project, and have stalled at around $4 million.

Why does one need even 4 million dollars to demonstrate the literal truthfulness of an ancient story about a lone man, without modern technology, perhaps helped by some family members and slaves, building a box-shaped boat capable of housing two or seven of all kinds of animals, if Answers in Genesis and their interpretation of the Noah story is correct?

Are they suggesting that Noah was the equivalent in his time of a millionaire? I know they will want to complete the project more quickly than Noah did, but even so, if it takes $24.5 million dollars to get it done, doesn’t that suggest something about the feasibility of the ark itself?

Would it be inappropriate to treat the exorbitant price tag of this project as evidence of what most people, including most Christians, can figure out even without calculating the cost of such a boat, the required space, the fact that the amount of fresh water they would have needed would have sunk the vessel, that the carnivorous animals needed to eat during the trip, or any other such details. It isn’t a story about something that actually happened.

And thank goodness. Most people are so inoculated against the actual story through exposure to versions in childhood featuring lots of cute animals and no emphasis on mass extermination, that they fail to notice what sort of deity the story actually depicts.

But the truth is that the amount Answers in Genesis was trying to raise doesn’t really prove anything about the Biblical story. What it demonstrates is something about Answers in Genesis. They aren’t interested in having one person or a small group show that it is possible to build an ark like Noah’s, as a man in the Netherlands recently did. They are interested in getting people to donate to a project that involves them turning Noah’s ark into a money-making enterprise aimed at bilking the gullible. Apparently in their thinking that is what Christianity is all about.

As Proverbs 17:16 says, “Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?” (NIV).

Of course, with all the people who have claimed to find Noah’s ark in various places, perhaps one could treat that as “evidence” that Noah had an enormous multi-million dollar fleet?  :-)

Filed Under: Bible, Genesis, scams, young-earth creationism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Controversial Christmas Carols

December 18, 2011 By James F. McGrath 15 Comments

In groundbreaking but controversial research, historians are challenging this historicity of the account of the arrival of the magi offered in “I Saw Three Ships.”

Archaeologist and New Testament scholar Bob Carlung, who has spent his life investigating the historic topography of the Holy Land, said in a recent interview, “It is simply unfeasible that there was a waterway for ships leading to Bethlehem in the first century. Not only is there no text that refers to such a canal or river flowing into the town, nor physical evidence of the same, but there is not even a wadi that would have flooded seasonally or even occasionally that could have served to bring three ships from the East to Bethlehem by any known route.”

Kenneth Bacon, of the organization Answers in Hymnal, takes a very different stance. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is no reason to believe that a freak tsunami could not have occurred, carrying three ships inland from the Mediterranean to Jerusalem, where the Gospels say they arrived first. From there they would have dragged the ships, as was the custom in those times. Clearly this work by ‘historians’ is based on naturalist presuppositions and is little more than an attack on the foundation of Christianity, its authoritative, inerrant music.”

Theologian and New Testament scholar Lucas Romulan emphasized that it is not only possible but important to appreciate the meaning of the carol without resorting to such literalist harmonization tactics, and without being overly disturbed by historians’ skepticism. “Having the magi travel to Jerusalem or Bethlehem via the Mediterranean when coming from the East only salvages the factual character of the carol’s geographic and seafaring claims at the expense of other more important elements. After all, if they came by that route, could we really categorize them as wise men any longer?”

Conservative Christian apologist Saxon De Geyter proposed yet another alternative viewpoint. “Camels in those times were referred to as ‘ships of the desert.’ If one treats the reference as being to camels rather than boats, then the problem disappears and the factual truthfulness of the carol is preserved intact.”

While theologians and scholars continue to debate, many of the faithful remain unshaken in their faith. “We have celebrated Christmas the same way every year for as long as I can remember,” said the 87-year old Doris Pewarmer, longtime member of the First Carolingian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. “I grew up being taught that the carols are true. As a child, I always played the smallest boat arriving in Bethlehem in our annual Christmas pageant. The ship of my faith in the traditional carols is not going to be swayed by these tiny breezes from historians and scholars. You ask me how I know they sailed? They sail within my heart!”

Filed Under: Bible, Christianity, fundamentalism, humor, inerrancy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 15 Comments
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