Natalie Burris

Mohler and the threatening papyrus fragment...

One of the more intriguing news items this week is the discovery of a fourth-century papyrus fragment that suggests that Jesus had a wife, or at least that some early Christians believed that Jesus had a wife. The fragment also suggests the existence of a woman disciple.

When I listened to NPR's segment on this exciting revelation, I got the first hint of conservative Christians' reaction to the suggestion that Jesus may have had a wife and a woman disciple. Barbara Bradley Hagerty pointed out that "the reference to a female disciple goes to the heart of a worldwide debate about the role of women in the church." Darrell Bock, New Testament scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary, made sure to minimize this new finding:

It's a small, extremely fringe, light text with no context, and so to think about doing something about a tradition simply on the basis of, of that kind of a text, it's making a change on the basis of an asterisk.

Cue Southern Baptist Archbishop Albert Mohler. Even before clicking over to his article on the fragment, I could already tell on Twitter that Mohler was on the defensive:  

@albertmohler

The real agenda behind "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife." It is the rejection of normative biblical Christianity. http://ow.ly/dQVOm 

In Mohler's panicked post, which exhibits a characteristic fear of non-evangelical scholars, he accuses Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King of "over-reaching." Delicious irony, indeed. Mohler himself seems to be over-reaching--and overreacting--to minimize the notion that Jesus could have had a wife or a woman disciple. 

Brian LePort rounded up some reactions to this discovery (including Bock's reaction), and no one seemed as riled up about it as Mohler. So why does Mohler use such dramatic language, like "sensationalism," "heterodoxy," and even calling King's work "an effort to replace biblical Christianity with an entirely new faith"? I am intrigued that Mohler feels so threatened by this tiny piece of papyrus, which is nowhere near conclusive proof that Jesus was married or had called a woman disciple. 

Perhaps I found the answer in Mohler's characterization of the "ambitions" that drive so-called heretic scholars' efforts to study ancient texts:

Feminists have sought to use the Nag Hammadi texts to argue that women have been sidelined by the orthodox tradition, and that these Gnostic texts prove that women were central to the leadership of the early church, perhaps even superior to the men. 

[...]

Professor King, along with Princeton’s Elaine Pagels, has argued that the politically powerful leaders who established what became orthodox Christianity silenced other voices, but that these voices now speak through the Nag Hammadi texts and other Gnostic writings. Writing together, King and Pagels argue that “the traditional history of Christianity is written almost solely from the viewpoint of the side that won, which was remarkably successful in silencing or distorting other voices, destroying their writings, and suppressing any who disagreed with them as dangerous and obstinate ‘heretics.’”

Although the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Jesus not having had a wife, Mohler's fearful reaction is telling. The suggestion that a woman disciple may have existed is threatening to Mohler's carefully-constructed "biblical, orthodox Christianity." Even if the evidence is scant, it seems Mohler feels he has a duty to dismiss an alternative theory of Jesus' life and ministry. It comes across as offensive to Mohler that a woman would be central to the leadership of the early church, perhaps even superior to men.

Perhaps King is right. The powerful have silenced those voices on the margin. In immediately and strongly dismissing the suggestion that Jesus may have had a woman disciple, Mohler places himself squarely on the side of the powerful, the side that won.

What was there all along...

The next section in Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible deals with "A Historically Growing Grasp of the Meaning of the Gospel."  It provides a helpful tool for thinking about a closed canon.  Smith writes: "[T]he Christian church’s historically progressive understanding and working out of the meaning and implications of the gospel as mediated to us through scripture has never in church history been complete and is not now complete."  

The common evangelical belief is that the New Testament provides all we need to know theologically, and modeled how believers work out the gospel in a "particular sociohistorial context.  This does not mean the New Testament authors "understood and worked out all the long-term implications of the gospel for theological knowledge, human life, and society."  Later generations continued to develop the authors' theology in new ways.  It took over 350 years "to work out orthodox, catholic, christological, and trinitarian doctrines, which most evangelicals still affirm as theologically nonnegotiable today." I loved his description of this process, "theological wrangling."

"What was embryonic in scripture needed to develop and grow into a more mature theological expression of what was there all along."  Smith argues the New Testament authors had simply not "worked out the full implications" of the truth they so cherished, but which later generations of Christians have formulated.

Slavery is a prime example of this "unfolding."  The New Testament authors did not work out the gospel's moral implications for slavery.  This has caused many to reject Christianity, which is understandable.  I believe the doctrine of inerrancy keeps this stumbling block in place, ossifying what is supposed to be inchoate.  

Smith notes early Christians were, "like all humans, limited in time, place, and range of vision." For them, slavery was an unalterable fact of life.  The Gospel merely meant slaves should submit to their masters and masters should treat their slaves well.  But, the Gospel started planting seeds, "in the form of the then-radical idea that slaves and masters were equals and brothers in Christ."

For all Christians to unequivocally understand that the Gospel means the end of slavery took time and struggle--wrangling.  Today, all Christians look back and clearly know the truths of the Bible unfold in such a way that slavery is wrong.  The denouncement of slavery was not itself a teaching found anywhere other than in embryonic forms in the New Testament. But eventually all Christians grasped this truth by fleshing out the Gospel's ramifications.  Smith explains: 

[T]he total meaning of the gospel did not land on the apostles’ doorsteps the day after Pentecost, like a cognitive FedEx package containing everything the church would ever need to know, think, and believe until Jesus returns in glory. The apostles understood and preached the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ. But they did not know and teach the fullness of the many implications of that truth for doctrine, relationships, and society. That was a task given to subsequent generations of believers across church history.

He later describes this process as a "slow but ultimately revolutionary leavening of the gospel in human life," not overtly prescribed but nevertheless a valid result of New Testament teachings.  

Smith's use of slavery as an example, to me, highlights the necessity of decolonizing our faith.  Of course there were those who knew from the start that slavery was unequivocally wrong - slaves themselves!  And I'm wary of describing the process as slow.  Just as Martin Luther King Jr. warned against white moderates' desire to take the civil rights movement more slowly, I wouldn't want the gradual, historical unfolding of the Gospel to sanction a delay in ensuring the liberty for all at the foot of the cross.

But back to Smith - he cites a litany of verses to support this premise (in a...biblicist sort of way), but his point remains that evangelicals only apply the "working out" and "growing" verses individualistically. Rather than strictly personal spiritual growth, what if these verses addressed the church's collective understanding of the Gospel?  What if truth itself is developing, unfolding, and dynamic, like a mustard seed, or yeast spreading through rising dough?

Pervasive interpretive pluralism frames the Bible as the complete and final teachings on all subjects.  But let God-fearing, Bible-believing Southern Christians in the nineteenth-century U.S. remind us: failure to grasp a historically progressive understanding of Scripture results in support for one of the ugliest times in human and American history, undergirded by what appears to be the Bible's defense of slavery.  

If a developing, dynamic truth sounds uncomfortably close to postmodernism, most of us would acknowledge that denouncing slavery didn't require a radical postmodern turn away from "objective truth."  I still believe truth has roots, but perhaps we've got to keep watering seeds and wrangling, careful not to let the Gospel fossilize.  Or perhaps we should be more careful not to let our understanding of the Gospel ossify, lest we fail to see what was there all along.

The authority of Scripture: in what do you place your faith?

A couple of months ago, I shared Christian Smith's thoughts about Scripture's ambiguity from The Bible Made Impossible.  This spurred a Twitter exchange  with Ben (check it out on Storify here), who disagreed with my characterization of the Bible as a polyvocal book which, spanning centuries, is not meant to be unified into one consistent narrative.  He didn't think this view allowed us to understand God's revelation, and wondered, "In what do you place your faith?"

This question revealed a telling aspect of biblicism, which seems to result in a faith placed more in the Bible rather than in Christ.  If inerrancy and infallibility are in peril, consequently one's faith is on shaky ground.  So once we deconstruct biblicism, where do we look to for authority?  

Smith addresses this issue in Chapter 7 of The Bible Made Impossible.  Biblicists view authority as one-dimensional: the Bible's words are actually God's words, without error, which provide an infallible doctrinal system that is applied to our lives as a divine handbook.  

However, only a handful of books actually provide moral and theological instruction, as most of Scripture is narrative.  (Notice my "Twitter debate-partner" stated, "narratives are for people who don't believe in truth.")  The rest of Scripture is poetic, legal, or some other non-explicitly-didactic form.  

The most common type of authority is "legitimate power," or the ability to get people to do things they might not want to do.  It's a collective belief that something is valid, even if undesired.  Taxes are a great example.  Most people don't enjoy paying them, but we all do, because of government's authority to tax.  

This definition of authority doesn't work out well when applied to the Bible.  Rather than "power over," the Bible's authority can be cast in terms of "power to," a transformative capacity.   A person with this kind of authority can "intervene in the world that in some way alters it."  The Bible

has the justified, valid, and legitimate power to “get things done” in our lives, to intervene with us to make a difference in outcomes. [T]his “power to” involved in the Bible’s authority is a “transformative capacity,” not merely to force the unwanted, but to change things in the world and our lives with a real justification and validity.

Smith finds this approach similar to N.T. Wright's, as detailed here: How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?.  Last May, I wrote a little about this great article, and thought it fitting to re-post a snippet because it works so well with Smith's critiques.  Authority isn't correctness or validity, but rather is rooted in the church living out and re-creating God's redemptive story.  This is why Scripture has narratives.  Wright explains:

Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works.  Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away.  Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’.  That, actually, is what the parables are all about.  They offer, as all genuine Christian story-telling the does, a world-view which, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters the world-view that they were in already.  

Wright concludes:

Scripture contains many things that I don’t know, and that you don’t know; many things we are waiting to discover; passages which are lying dormant waiting for us to dig them out.  Awaken them.  We must then make sure that the church, armed in this way, is challenging the world’s view of authority.  

Smith and Wright's reframing of authority reminded me of the old hymn, Tell Me the Story of Jesus:  

Tell me the story of Jesus,
Write on my heart every word.
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.

I found it interesting that one line of the hymn is "Love in that story so tender, clearer than ever I see."  Clarity?  Doesn't allowing ambiguity and narrative-driven authority result in the opposite?  

I don't think so. Narrative is powerful.  Rather than preaching at others or warning they're on dangerous ground for not accepting Western notions of correctness and legitimacy, let's tell and live out redemptive stories.  Write them on hearts.  Quietly shatter world-views with them.  Perhaps then we'll understand the Bible's words more clearly than ever, and won't worry so much about placing our faith in the Bible when it's deconstructed by modern definitions of authority.  

Inerrancy is weak

The next section in Chapter 7 of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible encourages an understanding of various meanings the written word can take on, which biblicists often fail to appreciate.  As a result, biblicists find themselves in some tough spots.   

A written phrase can simply make a descriptive statement, or it can evoke commands, promises, warnings, criticism, surprise, inspiration, insults, etc.  

Smith points out "the use of speech to communicate is not a simple matter of speakers intending to make clear propositional statements that, when properly interpreted, reproduce the original propositional meaning in the minds of those receiving the statements." When translating written utterances into different contexts, "significant problems of meaning arise."

Smith continues: "the meanings of terms such as 'error,' 'mistaken,' 'inaccurate,' and 'fallible' become not entirely straightforward when speech acts are understood in this way."  In imposing these categories (which I argue are very modern Western notions), what does it mean for warnings, expressions of surprise, insults, appeals, promises, expressions of honor, etc., to be in error?  Smith writes:

Given the richness of the variety of kinds of speech acts that appear to be at work in the Bible, therefore, it seems quite inadequate to try to describe or defend scripture’s truthfulness, reliability, authority, and whatever else we might say on its behalf with single, technical terms like “inerrancy.” That particular term—a favorite of many evangelicals—tends to zero in on matters of accuracy in reporting on facts and events as a matter of correspondence between propositions and the real states to which those propositions refer. But that term tends not to capture the multitude of other ways in which the locutions of texts and their illocutionary and perlocutionary acts may or may not be reliable, authoritative, compelling, powerful, inviting, and so on.

We don't parse the accuracy of a comforting word given during a time of grief - and inerrancy as applied to the Bible works the same way:

Evangelical defenders of biblical inerrancy are used to the typical charge by more liberal critics that “inerrancy” is too strong, extreme, or demanding of a concept to accurately describe what the Bible is. What I am suggesting here is quite the opposite. “Inerrancy” is far too limited, narrow, restricted, flat, and weak a term to represent the many virtues of the Bible that are necessary to recognize, affirm, and commend the variety of speech acts performed in scripture.

Genesis 1-2 is an excellent example.  What was the intended effect of the written words of these chapters?  Was it to convey to the reader that the Yahweh God created a good world with his power?  Or was it to communicate a literal scientific account about the precise method and time period of the creation of the world?  Was it to banish rival pagan narratives of the earth's origins?  Or, anachronistically, was it to motivate followers of the Yahweh God to mobilize against teaching evolution in schools?  

To impose our categories of literalism and factual accuracy onto a rich, ancient text disrespects the intended effect of Scripture's written words.  Inerrancy forces the Bible to look like a collection of "error-free propositions with which to construct indubitably true systematic theologies[.]"  But the living God of the Bible "actively promises, confronts, beckons, comforts, invites, commands, explains, encourages," and more.  

I don't want the flat and weak version of Scripture that inerrancy hands us.  I want the complicated, perplexing, diverse, active, and living Scripture that isn't forced into categories such as "factually-correct," "error-free," or "literal."

The next section in Chapter 7 that I plan to post about is a discussion of biblical authority, which inerrantists usually bring up in response to the idea that the Bible was never intended to be viewed as factually error-free.

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Problems with the theory of inspiration

The next section in Chapter 7 of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible criticizes the deductive theory of inspiration.  Deductive reasoning starts with a theory, and then moves on to the observed object, which is the Bible in this case.  

Smith argues that evangelicals get into trouble when starting with the theory of inspiration, and describes the common logic:

(1) all scripture is in the biblical canon because it is inspired by God (per 2 Tim. 3:16–17);

(2) “inspiration” definitely means “plenary verbal” inspiration (every word and grammatical form is divinely inspired);

(3) since God does not err, tell falsehoods, or say useless things, everything in the Bible is not only inerrant but also meant to communicate divine truth, which readers must learn; and, therefore,

(4) in every statement the Bible, most often read in its “plainest” sense, communicates binding theological and moral truth.

Nowhere in Scripture is this model used to describe Scripture itself; inspiration is an external theory biblicists impose on the text.  And the point of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 was to describe Scripture's pastoral usefulness, not its factual correctness.

Similar to Timothy Beal's argument in The Rise and Fall of the Bible, which I discussed here, simply looking at the early church's concept of "the Bible" causes the doctrine of inspiration to collapse.  Early Christians had no concept of a closed canon, and passed around different versions of the authoritative version of Scripture until the final canon was determined in the late fourth century.

While most of what ended up in the New Testament canon had been written by the end of the first century, few communities had copies of all of these texts.  And, some texts many Christians considered scriptural weren't even included in the later official canon, while some texts considered non-scriptural ended up in the final canon.  Smith points out:

This means that the early Christian church lived without “the Bible” as we know it canonically for nearly four hundred years, even if many churches possessed copies of many of the documents that eventually went into the New Testament. That has big implications for the role of the church, the Holy Spirit, and the “rule of faith” in the function of scriptural authority for Christians.

Noting how the church has interpreted the Bible for the past 2,000 years is another aspect that pokes holes in the theory of inspiration.  Evangelicals have a tendency to be anti-traditionalist and to not lend as much credence to those who are not American (or, I would add, Western European).  Smith calls this tendency "foolish and arrogant."  We miss out on the benefit and insight of our predecessors.  

We have no reason to pretend to be "biblically or ecclesially self-sufficient" or feel superior to our predecessors and to non-Western believers.  Smith writes:

American evangelicals should pay much greater attention to how Christian believers read and interpret scripture in other parts of the world, across space, particularly perhaps in the Global South. “The church today must be open to listening to how other Christians from other cultures read Scripture and live it out in their daily lives” [quoting Peter Enns]. American evangelicals have already learned and can still learn a great deal from Christian believers outside their subculture and normal social networks.

Non-present-day and non-American interpretations won't always necessarily be better, but at least bucking this anti-traditionalist and ethnocentric trend will "reveal blind spots, challenge parochial views, offer insightful perspectives...and suggest helpful ways to resolve differences of understanding within the American evangelical world."

Not surprisingly, this is one of my favorite points of the book, because I believe the theory of inspiration aggrandizes the perspective of those who have the loudest voices when interpreting Scripture within North American evangelicalism.  When the Bible is read in its “plainest” sense, and thus communicates binding theological and moral truth, this truth often ends up reflecting the viewpoint of the most influential and loud interpreters, who are usually middle- to upper-class, white, straight males.  And a purportedly "plain" reading of Scripture disregards the cultures in which both the text and the reader are rooted.  

My intent is not to marginalize middle- to upper-class, white, straight males, but rather to recognize that the logic that undergirds the theory of inspiration may keep helpful alternative views from informing how we look at Scripture.  

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?

The clearest and most forceful teaching in the Bible

I already discussed Chapter 6 of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible, but wanted to dedicate a whole post to one part of the chapter that was challenging and convicting:

[I]t seems as if believers—myself included—distract themselves with the more obscure, speculative, and cryptic issues related to scripture precisely in order to avoid having to face and act on the parts that are very clear and directive. Why address the main issues when one can mess around with peripheral details? It is like a kid fixating all day on exactly how much to shut his bedroom closet door to obscure the mess in his room that his mother told him in no uncertain terms to clean. Wanting and trying to know what we evidently don’t need to know is a great way to avoid having to deal with other, more basic things that we already quite clearly know but prefer to avoid, delay, or ignore.

[...]

...the vast majority of American Christians ignore one of the most pervasive, clear, straightforward, obvious, and simple commandments in scripture: to give away their money generously. [...] The vast majority of American Christians—who in fact are the wealthiest believers in all of history and the world today—give away relatively little of their money to the church or other worthy causes. Some give nothing at all. Yet the Bible simply could not be more persistently clear and forceful in teaching that what we do with our money and possessions is of major spiritual significance, that God commands his people to give and share their money and possessions generously, and that those who are selfish and stingy with their money and possessions will be judged by God. Giving money away is not rocket science. Nearly all ordinary people can do it. Yet only a minority of American Christians does so faithfully.

Why then do so many Christians get so invested in figuring out the intricacies of various biblical and theological matters about which the Bible is not entirely clear when they already don’t and won’t obey scripture on the very clear and simple matter of being generous with money and possessions? How are such believers to expect God to work to deepen their faith and knowledge of spiritual matters when they simply refuse to do what scripture has already made painfully plain and necessary? 

(bold emphasis added).  I'm glad Smith reminds us of this point.  I love to debate about theology, church practice, and politics, but too often I let the most clear and simple command Jesus gave us get lost in the shuffle.  

A hungry person does not care whether I am a Calvinist or Arminian.  A person who has more month than paycheck could give a rat's ass whether I'm a biblicist or a post-conservative Christological-hermeneutic-supporting Barthian student of the Bible (whew!).  

I don't think Smith is advocating anti-intellectualism here, but it's healthy to keep quibbles over such-and-such verse or doctrine in perspective.    

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Biblicism disguised as colonialism?

In Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible, Chapter 6 encourages us to accept complexity and ambiguity.  I have a slight issue with some points, but overall, Smith's critique of biblicism moves us away from marginalizing the other.

Smith wants us to "accept the real scriptures that God has provided us as they are," suspending preconceived notions as much as possible.  This is troubling because no one approaches the text in an unmediated way.  I do appreciate Smith's reminder to read the Bible with humility and to acknowledge its humanness, rather than as an error-free instruction manual.

But, even accepting ambiguity, the text is still shaped by the reader's gender, socioeconomic class, and race/ethnicity.  And even while acknowledging these factors, no one can completely shed preconceived notions.  I wish Smith would have been more careful in this regard, but he later articulates a helpful approach that de-centers those who traditionally control theological discourse.

Also, as I continued reading, Smith notes we can't force out the unambiguous parts of the Bible, quoting Gordon Fee:

God did not choose to give us a series of timeless, non-culture-bound theological propositions to be believed and imperatives to be obeyed. Rather, he chose to speak his eternal word this way, in historically particular circumstances and in every kind of literary genre. By the very way God gave us this Word, he locked in the ambiguity. One should not fight God and insist that he give us his Word in another way or, as we are more apt to do, rework his Word along theological or cultural prejudgments that turn it into a minefield of principles, propositions or imperatives but denude it of its ad hoc character as truly human. 

Despite the impossibility of eliminating "theological or cultural prejudgments," Fee's point is the heart of Chapter 6, and Smith comes close to acknowledging what I quibbled with:

All of scripture is not clear, nor does it need to be. But the real matter of scripture is clear, “the deepest secret of all,” that God in Christ has come to earth, lived, taught, healed, died, and risen to new life, so that we too can rise to life in him. On that, the Bible is clear. But to try to claim a plenary clarity, consistency, and completeness of information for all passages of all of scripture is futile. There are parts of scripture that we do not understand and probably never will understand. We might as well admit that fact.

Greater humility would help recognize ambiguity.  Many evangelicals elevate the importance of their group's doctrines into dogma.  And many elevate their opinions to doctrine level.  I find that lack of humility (and naivete about eliminating all preconceived notions) can be addressed more fruitfully when we de-colonize our theology and build a bonfire of that table where only certain North American and European men can sit.  Smith's sociology background becomes helpful here:

[P]eople predictably tend to inflate the goodness, importance, and credibility of anything associated with the social groups to which they belong (their “in-groups”) beyond what is objectively real and justified; and they predictably tend to depreciate the goodness, importance, and credibility of anything associated with groups that are socially different and to which they do not belong (“out-groups”). It is all unfortunately part of “normal” social-psychological personal and group identity construction and maintenance. But that does not make it right, good, or helpful when it comes to Christian theology and church unity.

Smith unequivocally states that Christians must "stop excluding, dismissing, discounting, and ignoring other Christians who do not deserve that kind of treatment."  To which I say, "Hurrah!"

Smith doesn't explicitly mention post-colonial theory or race and gender, but points out that biblicism's logic sets up the reader as truth-arbiter - "absolutely definite, divinely authorized, universally valid, indubitable truth," which I think results in marginalization of the other.  It's difficult to believe a "biblical" truth tentatively, to recognize one's interpretation might be incorrect, or to concede the plausibility of other interpretations.  

I would add that many biblicists are European/North American and have exported this logic, either through missions or by simply controlling the discourse within the West for so long.  Biblicists are traditionally those with the most power and money.  So, what's actually imposed is what European/North American biblicists deem biblical truth.  When many think they are exporting solid biblical truths, in reality, they're exporting (or imposing on minorities within U.S./Europe) a particular interpretation of Scripture that conveniently shuts out dissenters, even when the dissenter truly wants to follow Jesus.  

Biblicism becomes colonialism in disguise.  It doesn't matter whether the colonized have an alternative perspective, because truth is truth and the inerrant, universal Bible said so.  Thus, I appreciate Smith's suggestions that de-construct harmful ideas about biblical interpretation.

When watertight, insular beliefs are actually identity-markers...

Last week on Anderson Cooper's show, Elizabeth Esther spoke out against Michael Pearl, who advocates hitting children as young as two with plumbing pipe.  Esther grew up in Christian fundamentalism, and previously used Pearl's teachings to raise her children.  After several children died at the hands of Pearl-following parents, Esther now speaks out against these harmful practices. 

A couple who follow Pearl also appeared on the show, and wrote about their appearance on The Christian Post.  The language they used reminded me of the way many fundamentalists and evangelicals ensure a watertight, insular belief system.  The couple quoted Pearl, who remarked:

The people who condemn biblical chastisement do not believe the Bible. They judge others by their own experience.

The couple also stated, "The only real issue is whether or not you agree with the biblical precepts that are given to us in the Book."  Throwing down the gauntlet in this way is hostile to disagreement.  Using the "biblical" label, Pearl and his followers equate his teachings to the very Word of God, so it becomes difficult for other professed Bible-believers to oppose him.  

Elevating your interpretation to Scripture itself is only one rhetorical move employed by fundamentalists and evangelicals.  Another common tactic is the persecution complex, which Christians often use together with "biblical" rhetoric.  Believing you are a victim of a sinful majority is an excellent way to dismiss opponents:

[I]t is incredulous to believe something simply because a majority believes it. [...] Majority does not matter; only the Bible is our foundation and what it has to say.

[...]

Also noteworthy is the fact that the majority of the opposition does not come from those duly learned in Scriptures, but from mostly secular psychologist, child advocates (which are rarely biblical advocates), and liberal Christians who oppose a lot more conservative points of view on Christianity in general – know your source and research its roots!

Is this the “crowd” you truly want to be in line with? If the enemy, the world, and secular humanistic followers are against it – chances are fairly high that it’s the right place to be and the right principle to stand for.

Framing the issue this way makes disagreement dangerous.  Equating an interpretation of the Bible with the Bible itself, and automatically portraying divergent beliefs as attacks from godless liberals, have formed evangelical identity.  Thus, those who don't want to be alienated from a community they love face high stakes if they disagree.  

Diverging from your church's core beliefs is often a scary, emotional experience.  I have genuinely wondered if I'm going to hell, and whether my disagreement simply means I've been duped by the secular, sinful "culture at large." 

David Rattigan, who has great resources on leaving fundamentalism and evangelicalism, shared an essay by P. James Bowen on leaving a watertight, insular faith, and I see much of these rhetorical moves at play.  Bowen describes his departure as painful and lonely.  In Bible college, he discovered Barth, Bultmann and Tillich. Although alienated from evangelicalism, he was reluctant to leave:

The shape of my faith was radically different from what it had been and there was no going back. But at the time I had no idea how much had changed, and the thought of leaving my evangelical home barely occurred to me. When it did, the thought terrified me. I still wanted to belong. No matter what I thought about charismatics and conservatives now, I still couldn’t bring myself to break away. I had always been one. They were my friends, my family. Where else was there? 

Once Bowen accepted he no longer belonged in evangelicalism, he realized his disagreements were often not theological, but 

a matter of personal identity. I had become, body and soul, a quite different type of person than the good people in that community. I still had a Christian faith. But the shape of that faith was, I finally realised, just too different from the shape of that community. I no longer belonged there. It took years to get from the changes that took place at Bible college to the day I finally left evangelicalism behind. It was a fight between my desire to belong and my inability to belong.

Many evangelicals (often unintentionally) view disagreement with evangelical beliefs as tantamount to heresy, because evangelicalism's identity has been grounded in unwavering "biblical" interpretations of Scripture and portraying dissenters as sneering liberals.  

Although the past decade has shown much promise, there's still little wiggle room for us questioners, even for those like Bowen who have no theological qualms.  As a questioner who has joined a local evangelical church again despite evangelicalism's troubling flaws, I hope to push against this insularity and create some wiggle room, because I know I'm not alone.  

How, then, do I handle truth claims?  I like Rattigan's approach in his FAQ section.  He's not abandoning truth claims, but rather acknowledging that many beliefs "are open to being thrashed out, tested, verified, debated and evaluated."

When Rattigan makes theological claims, he's honest about their "tentative, provisional and subjective nature."  He doesn't insist others accept his interpretation, "or that there will be divine consequences (i.e. punishment)" for those who disagree.

That evangelicalism's "big four," anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-homosexuality, and anti-environmental views, are actually identity-markers--rather than high-stakes "musts" that can't be separated from the gospel--is a freeing, healthy realization.  There are no divine consequences if I don't toe the line.  And many other beliefs, such as gender roles, pro-Republican views, pro-capitalism/consumerism, and pro-violence (including corporal punishment) are just as prominent as the big four in some circles.  It's just as freeing to realize that not toeing the evangelical line on these issues will not condemn me to hell.

If not biblicism, then what? Christian Smith and the christological hermeneutic

Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible argues Scripture isn't meant to be a handbook.  In fact, in Chapter 5, Smith purports that doing so is not a truly evangelical reading of Scripture.  Although biblicism looks like a "high view" of Scripture, it actually ends up demeaning the Bible.

If the gospel--the evangelion--is that God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ, we must go beyond viewing the Bible as a user's manual, even if it's considered divinely-inspired.

So what, then, is a truly evangelical way to read the Bible?  It 

confronts us with a particular story and message that, if taken seriously, blow the doors off every assumption, outlook, and experience that we have ever had apart from Jesus Christ. The evangelical message of scripture shakes loose from us every misguided and idolatrous preconception about everything, literally everything, that we thought we knew, and then begins to rebuild us in light of the singularly radical fact of who God really is and therefore who we really are in relation to God and what he has done for us. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we will ever need to hear and know, and it has the power to reframe and transform everything else.

Distilling this idol-crushing collection into a handbook neuters Scripture, turning it into the "security, certainty, and protection that humans naturally want" and a means to "facilitate the kind of secure, stable, and therapeutically satisfying lives we wish to live." 

Smith offers an alternative to biblicism: viewing Christ as the purpose of, center, and interpretive key to Scripture.  So, "every narrative, every prayer, every proverb, every law, every Epistle" must be read only in light of Christ and of God reconciling the world to himself through Christ.

Rather than basing the Bible's true-ness on modern standards of knowledge and a perfect jigsaw puzzle, a Christ-centered approach points toward "a common Christian mind" about what the Bible teaches.   

The Bible is not God's highest self-revelation.  Christ is.  The Bible is not the end - it's the means to an end in Christ.

Smith quotes several theologians who have discussed this christocentric hermeneutic, but I liked evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch's portrayal:

The object of our faith is not the church or the scriptures, not even our experience of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ himself, but Christ testified to in Scripture and proclaimed in the church.  [...] The Bible comes alive when it is read in light of the cross of Christ. [...] [T]he text does not yield its full meaning until we see it in its theological relation to the wider context—the sacred history of the Bible culminating in Jesus Christ. [...] [T]he salvific content of Scripture is God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.  What makes Scripture authoritative is that it focuses on Christ, [and] while fully acknowledging both cultural and theological diversity within Scripture, the Reformers held to its overarching unity.  One of their key principles was that "the whole of Scripture presents Christ everywhere."

What about issues on which Christians still need guidance, like gender roles and childrearing, or weightier issues like baptism and eschatology?  Smith proposes that the local church should work out these issues.  Rather than expecting the Bible to literally give us these answers, we are to view particular issues through the christological lens the Bible provides us.  

Does this particularist way of working out the details dangerously make the Bible reader the sole arbiter of truth?  Asking this question implies biblicists are able to "rise above" making themselves arbiters of biblical truth.  Human subjectivity is necessarily involved in biblical interpretation.  Moving away from biblicism simply acknowledges this fact and brings it out into the open.  How else are we to discern truth without involving our own subjective understandings?  To temper this problem, I would add that allowing community (over against individualism) and marginalized voices (women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, the global south) are important.

Smith anticipates a biblicist objection: everything we know about Christ comes from Scripture, so where is the christological hermeneutic's starting point?  Smith notes this critique reduces our faith to the Bible's "paper and ink" and is an "overly rationalistic, modern approach."  We need to leave room for the Holy Spirit.

At the chapter's closing, Smith encourages evangelicals to reconsider Karl Barth, as he provides a robust christological framework for biblical interpretation, moving us away from bibliolatry.  As a result, I've added a Church Dogmatics outline to my wishlist...

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