Natalie Burris

When defending the Bible is a defense of collapsed modernism

The final chapter in Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible offers quite a lot to digest, so I plan on discussing it in more than one installment.  Titled "Rethinking Human Knowledge, Authority, and Understanding," this chapter provides more suggestions for moving toward a postbiblicist, yet still evangelical, reading of Scripture.

Smith first argues evangelicals must break from modernism's epistemology (how we know what we know).  That today's evangelicals equate the most correct reading of Scripture with modernist knowledge is ironic given that evangelicalism grew out of opposition to modernism, especially naturalism, liberalism, and relativism.  Evangelicals "have drunk deeply from some of the wells of modernity and the Enlightenment, yet in ways they often seem to fail to notice."

One such "well" is epistemological foundationalism, the belief that rational people can identify a common foundation from which we build a body of reliable knowledge.  The foundation on which this knowledge rests must withstand all challenges and be universally accessible to all rational beings, producing reliable knowledge without fail.  All those who think rationally, then, can access truth that is certain and universally binding.  

This epistemology has collapsed, but evangelicals still hold to it by making the Bible the foundation for certain knowledge.  "Without realizing it, evangelicals embraced a view of scripture that was more driven by [...] generally modern preoccupations with epistemic certainty than by scripture itself."  So, rather than using the Word to critique modernism, evangelicals fully ingested some aspects of modernist thinking and equated its epistemology with the Word itself.

But Smith points out that, as a corrective, evangelicals shouldn't fully embrace postmodernism.  Just because modernism's attempt to frame truth as certain, rational, and completely accesible has failed doesn't automatically mean that all truth claims are simply exercises of power.  

Smith claims there are alternatives, and one such alternative is called critical realism.  This view abandons foundationalist illusions,

acknowledges the conceptually mediated and fallible nature of all human knowledge, accounts for the influence of historical and cultural context, and [unlike much of biblicism] recognizes the inescapably hermeneutical, cultural-historical, and interpretive character of all knowledge[.]

Smith argues that critical realism "breaks the stalemate and enables both sides [modernists and postmodernists] to move forward," especially because the modernist-postmodernist debate often reinforces the binary between objective-subjective truth.  

Smith doesn't actually go into much more detail about critical realism, but conveniently enough, he recommends another of his books as a starting point: What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up.  Although I found the next part of this chapter helpful (a discussion of inspiration, authority, and the dynamic, always-developing nature of the Gospel), I'm sort of disappointed Smith didn't flesh out critical realism a little more.  That said, he emphasized earlier that the book's purpose wasn't necessarily to provide a comprehensive solution to biblicism's problems.

Has anyone read up on critical realism or have any other books that would be a good starting point?

Are words directly knowable? Is "the other" so easily dismissed?

Chapter 3 of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible describes how we got to biblicism today.  Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield, two American theologians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ended up influencing modern evangelicalism with their "objective" views about knowledge.

One view, Scottish common-sense realism, believes humans can directly grasp the meaning of what we perceive - whether it be objects or words.  Words are directly knowable and directly represent objects and ideas, which our minds can know with certainty.  Another view, Baconian inductive-empiricism, is similar - it's gathering "natural specimens" as facts and arranging them to reach an understanding.

These contrasted with the subjective enlightenment idea that the "knower" has authority to define the "known" through his or her individual perceptions.  Hodge and Warfield took their views for granted when they discussed theology: the Bible contains all the facts we need to know, and our job as Christians is to collect and order them.

Smith points out a contradiction, because the Calvinist Hodge strongly believed in the fallen human nature, which should have prevented him from thinking we can simply know the Bible's propositional truths directly, without bias.  Although inconsistent with Calvinism, this framework thrived because it was a great weapon against the encroaching theological liberalism.

Smith acknowledges he pulled from Hodge and Warfield's least-sophisticated works, but only because such weaker ideas shaped later evangelicals.  I agree, as I see that many modern evangelicals still believe the Bible's truths are objectively evident.  They portray challenges to their "objective" view as a dangerous relativism and a capitulation to postmodernism. 

As is clear to most of us, Hodge and Warfield's views are problematic: "Perception, knowledge, science, and language do not function in the real world the way these theories say they do."  Language and words are highly contextual, ambiguous, complex, and can mean many things at once.  

"Facts" are not obvious, unmediated entities.  Instead, we actively interpret and mediate what end up as facts from various possibilities and meanings.  "All interpretations are also shaped by the particular historical and cultural locations and interests of the interpreters."  

The naive view that words are directly knowable has long been abandoned by informed thinkers.  Why, then, aren't more biblicists worried their interpretive framework might be problematic?  Smith describes their attitude as "unperturbed confidence."  This is when Smith's sociological expertise proves valuable, as I doubt a theologian or biblical scholar could provide such an astute assessment. 

Smith has several theories, but my favorite is his depiction of the strong, close, social networks among biblicists as a force in keeping biblicism alive, in spite of glaring problems.  Living in a relatively small, homogeneous, comfortable subculture means your inconsistencies will rarely be challenged.  Lest Smith come across as elitist, he notes even the most cosmopolitan form these close social groups.  However, research shows evangelicals in particular tend to create more homogeneous environments compared to other U.S. Americans.  

Such strong group identity means that differences with outside groups become magnified.  Vilifying "the other" means biblicists ceased to

understand the other's reasons, perspectives, and beliefs, or to honor them as fellow believers and come to a deeper understanding and perhaps resolution of differences.  The point, rather, is to remain on guard from being contaminated by the out-group or allowing them to grow in influence.  And in that process the other is very easily turned into an impersonal, two-dimensional caricature.  Out-groups are reduced to an abstract "them" whose beliefs are abridged into a few bullet points of greatest disagreement, which need not actually be taken seriously on their own terms but rather simply need to be refuted and discredited as a means to validate the views of one's own group.

Under this rubric, "the other" becomes easily dismissed.  Before even coming to the table, your group has decided "the other" is already wrong.  Not compromising or agreeing to a wishy-washy ecumenism is a badge of honor.

Any thoughts?  Is Smith's portrayal of biblicists fair?

The Bible as (post)modern

Via Maggi Dawn, I found this great post by Jonathan Evens, a vicar in a church in the UK, which points out how modernist literature and Scripture are similar:

Maggi Dawn has noted in The Writing on the Wall a similarity between the middle style of Dante which moves between different modes of expression and the way "the Bible tells its stories, moving backwards and forwards between primitive and sophisticated forms, and covering a wide range of genres, again conforming to Dante’s ideal of an unmediated accessibility to God." Dawn uses the standard image of a small library to describe the diversity within which this movement occurs: "Its stories are not laid out chronologically, and it is the work of so many different authors, in different genres and from different times, that although it seems like a book it would be more apt to call it a small library." 

[...]

Similarly, Gabriel Josipovici, in The Book of God, quotes James Barr’s comment "about the Bible needing to be thought of not so much as a book but as a cave or cupboard in which a miscellany of scrolls has been crammed." He notes that "many modernist works might well be described as more like cupboards or caves crammed with scrolls than like carefully plotted nineteenth-century novels or even fairy stories and romances." As a result, a "generation which has experienced Ulysses and The Waste Land[...]" should be to view this image of the Bible positively more easily than would a generation "whose idea of a book and a unity was a novel by Balzac or George Eliot."

Evens points to the "modernist generations’ ability to recognise the diversity of scripture and to note the significance of the movement backwards and forwards within its form..."  

Although Evens uses modernist literature as an analogy for Scripture, the backward-and-forward, non-linear descriptions sound postmodern as well.  And just like Evens highlighted the modernist generation, I think that many postmoderns can understand the Bible in a unique way.

By postmodernism, I am referring to the idea that the world is a linguistic, social, and cultural construct.  Context is important, as is deconstruction of power, authority, authorship, and discourse.

photo © 2009 bagaball | more info (via: Wylio)

N.T. Wright, in a great example of this construct/context view of the world, employs a metaphor of a five-act Shakespeare play to describe the authority of Scripture (or rather, an alternative to an UN-postmodern notion of authority).  The fifth act is unfinished, however, because the church is to act it out for themselves.  Wright's metaphor hints at ideas in Evens' post: a backward-and-forward motion, and drawing stories together.

The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand.  That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution.  This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again.  It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities.  Among the detailed moves available within this model [...] is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus.  The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end.  The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. 

Chris Ridgeway also discusses the idea of Scripture as a drama in his thesis he has shared on his blog, and acknowledges its postmodern character.  Chapter 2, drawing from Kevin J. Vanhoozer, includes the following:

[H]ow then, does the church faithfully perform the script of scripture? Vanhoozer asserts that the actions themselves are generated by Scripture—"canonical practices." Genres of scripture provide much more than a taxonomy, but set directions and rules for fitting participation. Drawing from Russian literature professor Mikhail Bakhtin, he finds that speech genres are actually "life genres"—literature falls into generic types because certain human situations regularly recur. Genres of scripture such as recounting history (narrative), praising God (psalms), cultivating the fear of the Lord (wisdom) are communicative practices that instruct, mentor, and call for participation.

The stories in the Bible reflect our human situation, which is not a carefully-plotted novel.  Rather, these stories are part of an ongoing drama that we get to act out.  Whether these ways of looking at the Bible are drawn from modernist literature or postmodern philosophy, they seem compelling...

Attack mode

Out to lunch the other day with a couple of co-workers, we ended up, in a moment of self-realization, cracking up at our tendency to contradict anything and everything.  The three of us consisted of two attorneys and an attorney-to-be (will be licensed in November 2012, not that I'm counting down or anything...).  We ended up in healthy debates about a lot of things, from what it's like to own a small business to Derrick Rose's height.  I even resorted to looking up his height on my smart phone to end once and for all the debate over whether he was 6'2" or 6'3" (gah! lawyers!).  

photo © 2011 Keith Allison | more info (via: Wylio)

One of my co-workers jokingly remarked that she does all this research about the Bulls just so she can argue about it later.  Her comment reminded me that I have this same mentality when it comes to my faith and my political beliefs.  I have the tendency to read books, a newspaper article, or even Scripture through the lens of "How can this support my view so that I can refute others if I need to?"  

This tendency probably stems from the fact that, in the last 3 years in school and at my job as a paralegal, I have been taught to read through cases with a bias toward my client's situation.  I'm not sure if most people are sure how our system of law works here, but basically, attorneys have the job of playing up favorable decisions and distancing the harmful ones.  Cases that have been decided in our jurisdiction have the force of law--the same as statutes. (This is why conservatives' whines about "activist judges" come across as so ignorant to me).  Therefore, if a previously-decided case addresses our client's predicament, you better hope the outcome will be in your client's favor.  If not, you better distinguish that puppy.

So when I read books like, say, The Rise and Fall of the Bible, or even fiction ones like The Hunger Games, I am constantly searching for a good point or a helpful argument that can knock down my hypothetical opponents.  I don't think this is healthy, and probably causes me to miss out on actually learning something.  Of course, to rectify this I don't expect to come to any text with a blank slate, and I don't realistically expect to set aside my biases.  This would be ignoring an important point that postmodernism has taught us.  But, I do want to get out of this "attack mode" while reading.  Winning an argument should not be the end goal of learning or reading. Does anyone else do this, or am I the only one?

Thoughts on unity from around the web

photo © 2006 walknboston | more info (via: Wylio)

 

Many bloggers have participated in the Rally to Restore Unity (see more info and make a donation for clean water here), and it's been great reading their posts.  I thought I would highlight some quotes from several posts I have read:

• From Jon Coutts' This Side of Sunday:

Sometimes I hear people lament post-modernity as the denial of Absolute Truth. But that's not the take-away point from post-modernity, if you ask me. The point is that none of us should claim Absolute Knowledge of the Truth. But this doesn't mean we don't believe the Truth is out there. We may in fact believe that Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, who wants to be known in time, and sends His Spirit precisely for this purpose. With this belief we can see good reason to love and to speak with passion, kindness,humility and patience. Listening helps too. I can't believe how important listening is and how rarely it seems to really happen.

• From Charissa's Light Bulbs and Baby Steps:

[...] the more I try to homogenize the Body of Christ, the smaller and smaller it gets, until it's whittled down to just me. 

• I couldn't pull just one quote from Ian Cameron McLaren's post on cynicism.  I could have written it myself as it is exactly what I've gone through - it's basically my post on "snark" but much better written!

• From Jessica Harmon's The Life and Times of an Aspiring Linguist:

Apparently, there are Christians who believed that if we disagreed on a single point, then my eternal soul was in danger. So I started looking in to stuff. Young Earth Creationism. Intelligent design. Faith healing. Ordination of women. Homosexuality. Transubstantiation. Universalism. Predestination. All of these things that have been discussed and argued over throughout history.

It seems like we have taken those arguments and made them into what being a Christian is about. Instead of concentrating on what has united us through the centuries, we get stuck up on ridiculous arguments that no one’s going to win because there are proof texts and logic on both sides. What do we have in common? Christ, for goodness sake! We are called Christians after all.

• From Susie Finkbeiner's Periwinkle Peacock:

[...]nothing much is accomplished when all involved refuse to communicate, choosing only to rant and rave. Using Scripture (often far out of context) and self-righteousness (not the good kind) we plow over each other when, really, we probably agree on more than we know. We just don't take the time to understand one another.

• From Wendy McCaig's View from the Bridge:

While I hate the name calling, judgment and fighting as much as anyone, Christian unity is NOT “just getting along.” It is not pretending we all agree.  It is not ignoring each other. It is not pretending our differences are minor.  It is not the absence of diversity of thought.  It is not easy.  It does not require we sell out or give up our own beliefs.   It is messy.  It is painful.  It does require we respect one another.  It will require more voice be given to those historically excluded from the conversation.  It may require a shift in the power structures that currently control the Christian dialog. It is a mystery.   It is spiritual in nature.  It is worth the pain.  It is God’s desire.  It is achievable through Christ spirit.

Whew! I have now added a ton of great blogs to my reader!

The Bible as cultural icon

I wanted to share more from Timothy Beal's The Rise and Fall of the Bible, especially his thoughts on how some view the Bible as an icon.  

Our current understanding of the Bible is a relatively new one.  Different versions of the Bible have always existed, and in the past, the concept of a singular Bible would be foreign to most Christians.  There was never a standard edition, and even after the invention of the printing press, there were still thousands of different versions, according to Beal.

Beal believes that the Bible as we now know it--as a singular and cultural icon forged by Puritans, fundamentalists, and modern-day evangelicals--has come to a dead end:

The icon of the Bible as God's textbook for the world is as bankrupt as the idea that it stands for, of religious faith as absolute black-and-white certainty.  Just as the cultural icon of the flag often becomes a substitute for patriotism, and just as the cultural icon of the four-wheel-drive truck often becomes a substitute for manly independence and self-confidence, so the cultural icon of the Bible often becomes a substitute for a vital life of faith, which calls not for obedient adherence to clear answers but thoughtful engagement with ultimate questions.  The Bible itself invites that kind of engagement.  The iconic image of it as a book of answers discourages it. (p. 21).

Pastor Mark Driscoll tweeted the other day that a lot of Christians "treat the Bible like a gun collector treats a gun. Holding it, studying it, & admiring it but never going to war & firing it."  I strongly object to his use of violent imagery, but I have to admit that I agree with his underlying point.  Or rather, Christians use the Bible as a weapon, firing it at others, but not actually reading its contents to discover the ethic of Jesus that asks us to put down our guns...

photo © 2009 Ken Wilcox | more info (via: Wylio)

I suspect that the book will explore the modernist view of the Bible, and how this view fails us today.  A more postmodern understanding may help us resolve the contradictions and inconsistencies found in Scripture.  During my last year of college I wrote a few posts about postmodernism and faith, and I have them categorized under the tag "postmodernism."  It will be interesting if Beal takes the book in this direction.  Also, the philosopher Jean-Luc Marion uses the idea of "icon" in his writings, and I was exposed to some of his work in college as well.  Marion sees the icon as a positive thing, so the interplay between Marion and Beal could be interesting.

I heart I Heart Huckabees

photo © 2006 Valorie Beaman | more info (via: Wylio)

 

I just finished watching I Heart Huckabees.  It was weird but funny.  I loved the dinner scene with the Christian family and the Sudanese refugee!  "Jesus is never mad at us if we live with Him in our hearts."  Tommy Corn: "I hate to break it to you, but He is - He most definitely is."  If you ever want to watch an offbeat, philosophical film that skewers our society, I recommend this film.  The Shania Twain element was cracking me UP!

Memento

When it comes to watching movies I'm usually really behind--on this one about 8 years! I just saw the very non-linear Memento, and highly recommend it. I wanted to watch it ever since I read James K.A. Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism. Smith featured the movie in one of the chapters, using it to interact with Derrida and deconstructionism.

The main character in the film, Leonard, has to interpret his world solely through texts, since he has no short-term memory. He writes notes on scraps of paper, on polaroids he has taken, and even tattoos important facts on his body--and he doesn't trust anyone or anything outside of these sources. Memento is an embodiment of Derrida's famous declaration that there is nothing outside the text.

Foucault and the church

I'm reading the chapter in James K.A. Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism about French philosopher Michel Foucault’s thesis that power is knowledge. Smith relates this idea to our current society and church. Foucault performed case studies of what he calls disciplinary mechanisms, such as prisons and hospitals, which have all-knowing, all-seeing, insidious power. The same could be said for the influential shaping forces in our culture, such as capitalism and--capitalism's driving force--consumerism.

The scary thing is that the end goal of the disciplinary mechanism of capitalism/consumerism sounds similar to Christianity’s end goal: to transform us. Like penitentiaries in Foucault’s case study, our consumerist culture is a ubiquitous “apparatus for transforming individuals” aimed at forming knowledge within the individual. Foucault and Smith use words like “omnipresent” and “possessing wide-ranging powers” when describing disciplinary mechanisms. Do some of those descriptions sound a little familiar? 

Smith says that Christians can both agree and disagree with Foucault. American evangelicals’ initial reaction, however, since they have been so affected by classic liberal notions of self, are to agree wholeheartedly with Foucault’s rejection of disciplinary mechanisms. These forces suppress individual freedom, and many evangelicals celebrate individual freedom. Although conservative Christians criticize theological liberalism, Smith says they have “unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core” (99). Smith remarks: “We don’t want denominations to tell us how to run our churches, and we don’t want churches to tell us how to run our lives” (99-100). He goes on to say that “freedom is an idol of the contemporary church” (100). The reason we can agree should not stem from any encroaching-upon of the self, but rather we should affirm that harmful disciplinary mechanisms should be resisted.

Christians should disagree with Foucault, though, because a blanket rejection of all disciplinary mechanisms is not necessary. The Gospel is a shaping force, a form of disciplinary mechanism, albeit more powerful than capitalism or any institution. Christians are indeed called to conform, but instead to “an alternative conformity” transforming and renewing ourselves into Christ’s image (101). Romans 12:2 takes on a powerful new meaning. 

Capitalism and consumerism want to transform us into “economic animals whose primary end is production and consumption,” while other disciplinary mechanisms, such as our sex-saturated society, aim to “reduce us to sexual animals whose primary end is instinctual satisfaction” (102). The insidiousness and pervasiveness of marketing, which puts sexual, social, or even religious value on products, along with the truth claims that are covertly communicated in this whole process of making ourselves into good consumers, should be pointed out and resisted by the church (104). We are being formed into certain kinds of people by these forces in society, which right now look a lot more powerful than the church. In fact, many churches are capitulating to these disciplinary mechanisms, which is why a lot of churches seem to resemble entertainment/take-your-pick buffets these days. Smith ends the chapter with this:

“If our worship simply mimics the disciplinary practices and goals of a consumer culture, we will not be formed otherwise. Conceiving of the church as a disciplinary society aimed at forming human beings to reflect the image of Christ, we will offer an alternative society to the hollow formations of late-modern culture.” (107) 

I know this morphed into a horribly long and boring post that spoiled the chapter for anyone who hasn’t read the book, but it was a really complex section that I had to reread a few times and wanted to hash out by writing a summary. I also wanted to remember the quotes about freedom and the church, and blogging them makes it easy for me to find them later. The fact that we don’t want our churches telling us how to live is definitely something to revisit!

Todd tagged me for a book meme that I'll try to get to tomorrow, too!

God and empire

I just started reading Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, and wanted to share one of the many things that have jumped out at me. The authors, Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, give a summary of the book:

The epistle to the Colossians, we are arguing, was an explosive and subversive tract in the context of the Roman empire, and it can be and ought to function in an analogous way in the imperial realities of our time. This letter proclaimed an alternative reality, animating a way of life that was subversive to the ethos of the Roman empire. (8)

Walsh and Keesmaat dialogue with a postmodern young person named William, who was raised in a Christian home but later left the faith. Having dabbled in international finance, William is now jaded and looking for something more, something beyond our consumerist McWorld, beyond our current-day empire of militarism and global capitalism.

William may want God, but the question is, which god does he want? And on whose terms will he accept this god? You see, the danger of wanting a god, without being willing to allow this god to speak in a voice that is radically other to our own voice, is that the god we end up with is like any other consumer product we take off the shelf. We would never be accountable before such a god, precisely because we never allow this god a voice that would actually call us to account. This consumer-friendly god, this god of postmodern construction, this generic off-the-shelf god would be no God at all. Rather, it would be an idol. And before idols like this the empire has nothing to fear, because ultimately such idols—such gods—are in the service of the empire. (34).

I’m excited to see the direction that Walsh and Keesmaat take with this, since I struggle with what it means to live Christianly in the confines of this American/global empire. I wonder how to truly listen to the voice that isn’t my construction or a result of my consumer choices. I wonder how to discern how much we know of God is a convenient creation that justifies our existence as citizens of an empire. How much have we rendered powerless the Gospel since it would force us to make difficult choices in our context of a powerful military and accumulation of wealth?