The answer is, I'm not sure, but I think so, though perhaps some people wouldn't think me one.
I was certainly brought up Christian; baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran Church. But all that was basically compulsory, and I have only thought deeply about theological matters since round about the time Hannah was pregnant with Twyla, 2 1/2 years ago. Ten years ago, I took at course in college "The Bible as Literature", and that was a highlight for me, because I was very struck by the Book of Ecclesiastes, struck profoundly. Outside of that, not much theological thinking until recently.
Lately, I have attended about six church services at two different churches near our house in Chicago. One I like quite a bit, especially for its music. I could see myself attending that church somewhat regularly over the coming years. For the music, the organ tones bouncing around the tall ceilings.
But, still, the fact is that I couldn't care less whether "Jesus Christ" was a real person; nor do I care, if he was, what happened to him. Nor do I care whether there was a real "Moses", "Noah", or any of the people mentioned in The Bible.
But I do like the stories in The Bible. I think each of them constitute narrative poetry. I get a lot out of making sense out of and contemplating these stories. Again and again. What is this character of God all about, anyway?
What is The Bible to me? It is an anthology of poetry that I find extremely profound. I don't care who wrote its stories. I don't care whether anything in it is historically true (I actually consider most if not all of it to be not).
No where in The Bible's chapters will you find anything remotely like, "If you read this book, you are compelled to form a church; you are compelled to be a Jew or Christian; you are compelled to take any of this literally; you are compelled to fight wars in its name." The fact that people do form churches around this book, become Jews or Christians, take its contents literally, and fight wars is a matter of custom and convention and basic human nature; and yet, all of that to me is basically wind outside the window, or leaves floating by as I walk through a park. I'm aware these things happen, and that they have relation to The Bible, but none of it intrudes upon the simple relationship between me, the book, my mind, and all the ideas it raises, and the ideas I connect from other profound works of literature.
If it is true (and I think it is) that "No writer has assimilated the thoughts and reproduced the words of Holy Scripture more copiously than Shakespeare," as scholar Thomas Carter wrote, then for me to understand Shakespeare, I need to know The Bible. The Bible, empirically speaking, has had the most influence on artists and thinkers over the last couple thousand years than anything else. That's the relationship I want with The Bible — as a source of profound ideas, profound problems (encountered by Biblical characters), and, perhaps, even wisdom. Though the wisdom is found not by merely believing what any of the Biblical books say; if The Bible is involved at all, it is in my own reconciliation of Biblical ideas within my own life, finding and earning a resonance in my own terms. I think that knowing The Bible will make me a better writer, better composer, and a more intellectually sophisticated person.
Church can be a great house for music; it can be a great lectern for a pastor to soulfully engage in public poetry interpretation; it can be a great routine for socializing with others. Ideally, anyway. I would love church to be like that, instead of crappy music, boring and self-involved pastors with no skill in poetry interpretation, and a place where I don't care to know anyone in particular.
But the pull to attend church, to believe any religious doctrine literally, or to do anything except treat The Bible as profound and influential literature simply isn't there for me. God is an idea. It is an idea multifarious, and I think one should to contemplate this idea, deeply, even as a daily object of meditation.
If people ask me, how do we save religion? I would say, it'll save itself, because religion is a response to human impulses that will never go away. What I'm more interested in preserving (and encouraging in others, including working artists) is a deeply intellectual and literary-based attitude that can anchor one's relationship with The Bible, and any sacred book. "God" comes only from the stories we have about God. Outside of literature, everything people say about "God" is conjecture, guesswork, speculation, and opinion. Which I'm not saying is good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, but rather that all that is deracinated. God, at root, is a literary invention, a character that, as billions of people testify, is something we can relate to, as mystery, revelation, light, love, true knowledge, and so on. It is not easy to relate to the character of God. Yet, somehow, we do, don't we, partially, even at the same time as the character of God kind of makes no sense.
I find divinity through profound literature, a Logos-based mimesis, and I find divinity in the relations between literature and the rest of the anchors of the Humanities — languages, history, the arts, and philosophy. Relating with characters sharpens one's own character. The reason I think myself a Christian is, everything else aside, I simply care more about The Bible and the character of Christ more than I do any other sacred book or character. These relate to my life more than the Koran, various Buddhist texts, or anything else. The idea of God, as dramatized in The Bible, and of Christ, are important ways I relate the other anchors of the Humanities together; as a kind of edifying glue, or touchstone, or, in a sense, a compass. I'm a Christian because the mere fact that I return to The Bible so often means it is a fundamental guide as I build my own knowledge.
The Geneva Bible, that is. Such is what most influenced Shakespeare, as evidenced by the actual plays (not what we do or don't know about the actual author, who I think was Christopher Marlowe, anyway).
This is the foreword of the book, Shakespeare and the Holy Scripture, by Thomas Carter, a fascinating book from 1905, in the public domain:
I HAVE endeavoured to find out how far the English Bible influenced the thought and formed the vocabulary of the greatest of English writers. It is obvious that the citing of passages which may be termed parallel has its limitations, and that interesting parallels might be discovered in any great literature. Words which are to be found in Shakespeare and the Holy Scripture may also have been the common property of the country side. But a careful study of the poet reveals a wide knowledge and use of Scripture, and one is therefore justified in assuming that more remote parallels may have arisen from the same source.
Carter goes on to demonstrate the just how woven into the drama were imagery, metaphors, figures of speech, and ideas found in the Geneva, as well as the Bible, in general. He writes, "No writer has assimilated the thoughts and reproduced the words of Holy Scripture more copiously than Shakespeare." Also, "I have studied every line in the plays in order to trace out how far this indebtedness extends, and after a careful comparison have come to the conclusion that the Genevan Bible was the version used by Shakespeare."
The Geneva, I should mention, was by far the most popular English Bible of Shakespeare's time. You can read the Geneva here. By our standards, it is a tougher read; though far from impossible or even all that hard. You get used to its semantic rhythms, different spellings, and different typology. Very rewarding, all in all.
Christopher Hitchens does not know the difference between greater detail of description and explanation. If he would like a further explanation of this point, I would suggest that he double the font size of the above post, and read it again. And if greater clarity of vision is tantamount to explanation, everything should become perfectly clear.
I wonder how many people realize what an enormous logical takedown this is. Not only of Hitchens' claim, but also that of any atheist who makes one similar (and those are abundant).
In a genuine, non-tone deaf review of Hitchens' book advocating atheism, Novak ends with this...
One can take the rake of his arguments to pull out dead grass in one’s own sloppy thinking about God.
...which I think functions as the highest form of praise one can bestow upon atheists. For what atheists usually seek to do — disprove the existence of God — is impossible. But what atheist screeds can do, by use of skillful writing and clear thinking, is help us better irrigate our resonance with the Idea of God. For there is plenty of sloppy thinking about the Idea of God. I can think of several American pastors I've heard speak that would qualify in that regard.
For the problem with those pastors that I've heard preach is, to boil it way down, is a severe lack of skill in effective poetry interpretation. What is needed is a re-dedication to learning the skills of the trivium, through close-reading, discussion, and then sermon — learning first the grammar sense of a poem or Scriptural passage through close-reading; then its dialectical sense through discussion with others who are close-reading; and finally, in their sermons, the rhetorical sense, evoked in effective communication. What most removes sloppiness is the first sense, grammar, for it is here where we meditate upon the profound levels of meanings and etymologies of words, figures of speech, and ideas found in poems and Scripture. Grammar pulls out the weeds of "postmodernism"/"deconstruction", which can never be killed, but can be subdued as often as we found our poetry study in grammar, first.
The well-known Marvin Olasky explains how he does it in the course he teaches at the University of Texas. Interesting stuff.
One thought, tangential to Olasky, but related to God: People argue whether God exists. Big debate; hair is ripped out; throats sore; friends lost; etc.
But note that it is indisputable that the idea of God exists, the world over. (And I particularly recommend Mortimer Adler's summary of the Idea of God, from his book The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought.) And it is making inquiry into "what is the idea of God?" that is, broadly speaking, what comprises theology, and also happens to be the manner by which we appreciate the profound poetry that is the major literary works we call The Bible, The Koran, etc. I'm not sure that this isn't the only manner we actually contemplate "God", bottom line.
In other words, it doesn't matter whether God exists, from an empirical point of view. It is all steamy hot-air. Because we have such a broad, diverse, and in-depth literature, much of which functions as character-development for the characters of God, and certainly tells God-related stories of innumerable flavors, to even consider "God" means we must consider the literature extant that provides our fundamental understanding of "God". Which means, logically, that the question of "does God exist?" is an enormous red herring. And which also means, logically, that anyone who even uses the word "God" accepts the existence of the idea of God, because that is exactly what the word "God" signifies. Basic grammar requires the signifier "God" to have a signified, a concept held in our minds.
There is no way we understand "God" that doesn't fundamentally include the elaborations upon "God" found in the world's literature. Sure, we conjecture, we speculate, we guess, we believe, we solidify our opinion, we even think we feel the spirit of God when we contemplate and meditate (maybe we do, maybe we don't). That is exactly how human nature operates, and I merely observe that here. But the anchor of "God" is found in literature. Scratches into stories, the world over through the epochs of man. And, whether so-called "atheists" like it or not, these sustain us. And inspire creation. And always will, because the evidence (in the form of world literature) shows that the need for sacred signified is part of our DNA.
That is the question posed for debate, and an intelligent one at that, between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. Their first exchange was posted yesterday, with more back and forths promised. I'd say that, in terms of the debate, this round goes to Wilson. I think he picked apart the logical fallacies and false claims of Hitchens' initial arguments quite nicely, thank you.
"A philosopher of art, in contrast to the philologist and to the maker of dictionaries, discovers that the identification of "creativity" with freedom is not hypothetical and that it is with widely received interpretations of freedom that he must deal. He finds, moreover, that the conception of freedom underlying speculation on art in all its phases — the artist's creativity, the autonomous judgment of works of fine art, and the productive imagination at work in the experience of profoundly moving works of art — is the theme of God's power and freedom to make or to originate the universe." — from the entry "Creativity in Art" in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas
I love "identification of creativity with freedom is not hypothetical", because it is a short road from "freedom" to "liberty"; and thus, to the ideals of America. I love, too, the connection here made between artist and God. On the latter point, it is crucial to understand "God" as a literary character that represents an idea that signifies a barely understood character of the human soul. In other words, through both outward expression and inward residence — as a unified Logos — our understanding of "what is the idea of God?" unfolds as genuine artistic freedom bound only by authentic representation of inward environs held in common.
David Plotz at Slate.com is blogging the Bible, and doing so in a compelling manner. After reading his take on the Book of Job, I myself felt compelled to write him a letter. Read his three-parter on Job (especially parts 1 and 3), and then witness my letter, reproduced below:
Mr. Plotz,
I'm reading your take on Job, and appreciating very much your commentary, and the attempt to make your way through his fascinating book (I judge the attempt successful).
One point perhaps to consider:
In Ch 2, verse 13, we learn that "they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great." ["They" being a broken Job and three friends seeking to console him -- ed]
To sit seven days and seven nights in one place -- something notable (though easy to miss). Think about it -- such a length of silent sitting is on par with Buddhist silent meditation retreats of today (or of certain strains of esoteric Christianity). In any event, for you to say "He's the opposite of patient" strikes me as too cut and dry, for the reason that he just in fact demonstrated not just patience, but patience to the extreme.
I am in the UChicago adult education course (the Basic Program), and we just read/discussed the Book of Job last quarter. I never found Job the character all that petulant, for what it's worth (though some in my class did). Frustrated, deeply confused, angry, embittered -- sure. He doesn't get what he did wrong, to deserve such consequence. He also seems deeply annoyed with his friends' statements about the matter.
To me, Job's protests and God's eventual thunderous response strikes at the heart of the philosophical debate between opinion and knowledge (see, for example, Plato's Meno). For all of Job's complaints, his characterization of God's accomplishments and his undeniable rule and stature are spot on. Even as God elaborates at length upon all that he has done, the main points of his angry speech recapitulate much of what Job had already said to Eli'phaz, Bildad, and Zophar (cf Ch 9 and Ch 12). Further, of course there is no "good reason" for what happened to Job -- God could never in fact explain the transaction he had with Satan, for if word got out to others, that this is what the God they worship actually does in his spare time (allow his colleagues to play with their lives) God's stature would surely diminish.
In other words, amidst all Job's angry rage, he is portrayed as having not just an opinion about God, but largely a true opinion. He basically gets God right. Still, of course, even the truest opinion is not as valuable as knowledge. Which of course God possesses about, well, everything, as is portrayed about the character of God from the first book of the Bible. There's the theological rub, as it were.
Of course, we don't really know much about the transaction between God and Satan — I myself lean to the possibility that God was trying to use Job to reach Satan with a demonstration of what deep belief entails, to puncture Satan's strictly adversarial nature (or to puncture "certainty", broadly defined). Notice that every major character in the Book either participates in certainty, or the puncture of someone else's certainty. And we readers can hardly be certain about the solid grounding of this story, since (ala King Lear) we become aware of a tranaction ongoing (between God and Satan) seemingly already begun.
Thus what the Book of Job appears to present us is a view that knowledge (or certainty) on the level that God possesses is both impossible for mortals to have, as well as the fact of having it would cause people to not believe in God anymore (or, at least as strongly), because they would see "behind the curtain" at how the heavenly bodies roll dice at their whim. Whether God should reveal to Job what actually caused his misery, he certainly shouldn't, if he wants to maintain his reputation. God, as it were, plays the game of perception to his advantage.
Which, of course, ought remind us of Genesis (Ch 3), and the tree that Adam and Eve did not partake of. Whether partaking of the Tree of Life directly leads to divine knowledge is a question we can only speculate upon. But, since that Tree is all that separates Adam and Eve from becoming Gods themselves, logic compels to at least consider that kind of speculation. God, being God who has presumably eaten from the Tree of Life (or at least possess for himself what the Tree offers) gets to be thunderous, misleading, and seemingly cavalier because, well, he lives forever and Job, Adam, Eve, and the rest don't.
Recall that the complete developmental template for classical education consists of the three stage sequence of the Trivium (Grammar to Dialectic to Rhetoric) followed by the four-pronged Quadrivium (Astronomy, Geometry, Music, Arithmetic). These are the Seven Liberal Arts. The first three account for our grammar, middle, and high schools (language-centered, not child-centered); the last four for our four-year university program. The Thesis project was traditionally completed (and orally defended) between the two, but has since moved to the very end. The entire template has roots in ancient Greece, and was modified variously through the Middle Ages and through the 19th century. The mastery of Latin and Greek are central; its overall aim might be summarized as developing the internal freedom to learn how to learn as well as how to live a contemplative, philosophical life. The side-benefits, as you might imagine, are enormous.
That brutally short summary is pretext for this passage (pp. 7-8, paperback) from the fantastic biography of JS Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff, my current pleasure reading:
For Bach, schooled in seventeenth-century thought, the concept that music formed a branch of the liberal arts quadrivium was still as valid as it had been for Johannes Kepler, who promoted the view that music mirrored the harmony of the universe. Music, then, with its traditional mathematical underpinning, provided an especially rich field of operation for a composer who was increasingly infected with scientific curiosity, totally uninterested in "dry exercises in [musical] craftsmanship, but throughly committed to advancing "true music," which Bach defined as music that pursued as its "ultimate end or final goal ... the honor of God and the recreation of the soul."
Taken literally as a metaphor (which I believe is traditional and proper way to treat such statements), how, exactly, is this inapplicable to the composition of tonal music today? I'd say it is entirely applicable. For tonal music has profound mathematical underpinnings (see Harmonic Experience, by W.A. Mathieu), and contra the postmodernists who claim that theology must overcome "postmodern insights" (it doesn't, for there are none), there is no reason whatsoever why today's composers cannot fashion music with a purpose to deepen the understanding of the character of God. Nor a reason why they can't do so in an entirely contemporary, resonant manner that speaks to regular people's expectations of musical mimesis.
In part because, well, "Bach did it", such is why I believe the sturdiest manner to overcome the widespread malaise of "postmodernism" (i.e., the cultural consequences of those 'gooey scramblers') and fashion a restored tradition of genuine art, is to reinvest the education of both children and adults in the Liberal Arts, through a classical education updated where necessary to contemporary concerns. This is the premise of "Great Artistry". One such update that I've previously suggested is to fold in certain principles from Waldorf education into the Trivium/Quadrivium (which we plan to do with our children). I imagine other such integrations are possible, as well.
I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.
As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.
I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.
... I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."
I am Dr. Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. I am writing on CNN.
Christianity is not an institution, not a purveyor of spiritual transactions, but a treasury of wisdom...
In other words, essentially literary — a literature of human character, profound allegory of the human condition. (I might add that I think an interesting way to think about, not Christianity, but religion in general, is that it is a hybrid primarily of the Humanities disciplines of theology, theatre, and political science. A social theatre that lives into and dramatizes theological poetry and asks of the audience participation through ritual and contemplation along several dimensions, and not mere audience passivity.)
Anyway, here's another quote:
When [Joseph] discovers Mary pregnant, he becomes extremely distraught; when the High Priest tells him he must separate from Mary now that she’s pregnant, he weeps openly; when he’s making plans to bring her to the enrollment in Bethlehem, he talks about how embarrassed he is to present this pregnant woman, decades younger than he is, as his wife. Most interesting is the scene when Joseph helps Mary down from the donkey and goes to find a midwife. Suddenly all of nature is frozen: he sees the birds motionless in the air and the stream standing still. The time of Christ’s birth is accompanied by nature’s stillness and awe, just as his Crucifixion will be accompanied by noontime darkness and earthquakes.
I like this, as more of a glimpse into the character of Joseph.
Last week, I read his speech delivered in Alabama, and was very impressed. I don't know whether I'll vote for him, but I certainly respect his depth of character, shown in this speech in abundance. Here's a kosmic klip:
I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I thank the Moses generation; but we've got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You'll see it. You'll be at the mountain top and you can see what I’ve promised. What I’ve promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I’ve fulfilled that promise but you won't go there.
We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens. There are still battles that need to be fought; some rivers that need to be crossed. Like Moses, the task was passed on to those who might not have been as deserving, might not have been as courageous, find themselves in front of the risks that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents had taken. That doesn't mean that they don't still have a burden to shoulder, that they don't have some responsibilities. The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there. We still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side. So the question, I guess, that I have today is what's called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy; to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?
I love that he challenges people to know the Bible, in order to understand the full implication of his meaning. Here's another klip:
Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go. We've come a long way in this journey, but we still have a long way to travel. We traveled because God was with us. It's not how far we've come. That bridge outside was crossed by blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, teenagers and children, the beloved community of God's children, they wanted to take those steps together, but it was left to the Joshua’s to finish the journey Moses had begun and today we're called to be the Joshua’s of our time, to be the generation that finds our way across this river.
There will be days when the water seems wide and the journey too far, but in those moments, we must remember that throughout our history, there has been a running thread of ideals that have guided our travels and pushed us forward, even when they're just beyond our reach, liberty in the face of tyranny, opportunity where there was none and hope over the most crushing despair. Those ideals and values beckon us still and when we have our doubts and our fears, just like Joshua did, when the road looks too long and it seems like we may lose our way, remember what these people did on that bridge.
The Genesis character Adam didn't "fall"posted by MD
Another reason why Sam Harris, that increasingly infamous "atheist", is not intellectually honest. Take this quote, from a discussion he's having with the equally intellectually dishonest Andrew Sullivan (though for different reasons for Sullivan) :
I also hope you appreciate the irony of your viewing your sexual orientation as a gift from God. I'm very happy, of course, that you don't consider your homosexuality to be a curse or a product of Adam's fall.
If you actually read Genesis, where this "fall" supposedly happened, you will struggle long and hard to find any evidence that the author or authors of Genesis (whomever that person or persons are) intended for the story to be about a "fall". What you will find is rather something of the opposite. Read this short excerpt, which is right after the character of God has punished the characters of Adam, Eve, and the serpent for their roles in the eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, from Genesis, Ch 3, verses 22-24:
Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" -- therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Hardly a "fall". Adam and Eve, if anything, rose up! (Although, more plausibly, they matured.) By eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve took an enormous step towards being, in God's words, "one of us". (Us? Us!....you mean, there was more than just one God? So much for strict monotheism.)
And, in fact, according to the story, only one step remained between Adam and Eve taking full membership in the God club, as Gods themselves -- namely, eating from the tree of life. Or, in a word, all that remained was immortality. In every other way, it is just logical to conclude that, in the story, Adam and Eve are as godly as godly can be. Which means, in the story, Adam and Eve possess as much creative power as God does.
Of course the story continues in Genesis, with multifarious narrative threads (my favorite: what, exactly, is this character of "God" all about?). But this is an important point, not to be passed over. There is a common belief, held the world over, that the story of Genesis includes a "fall" when in fact no honest reading of the text as itself would yield such an interpretation, but would rather read something of its opposite. Namely, that if "being a God" is a good thing (which is a reasonable assumption), then Adam and Eve's eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually a good thing, too.
Of course, we need notice that God "drove out the man". Did he "drive out the woman?" The story doesn't say. Maybe, maybe not. In any event, the lack of Eve being driven out of Eden in the actual story ought belie the notion that that in fact did happen. Because the story certainly isn't clear about that. In fact, it is a good thought experiment to wonder how the story could work as a story if in fact it was only Adam who was driven out, and not Eve. That would really call into question what the "garden of Eden" is, in terms of the story, wouldn't it!
In any event, this just goes to show that a profound misreading of the most influential book in human history is widespread. How the actual reading makes for a far more interesting story. And that this misreading is so common, that an avowed atheist like Sam Harris uses it in an argument with a believer in Christianity...which, it is good to also point out, is a word that appears no where in the Bible, either.
All of which renders Harris' critiques all the more thin, in case you didn't already hold that opinion of his work.
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