Biblical Literalism

   

Protestant Reformer John Calvin

     The recent controversy surrounding "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson underscores the deep divisions within American society – between urban and rural America, between "blue states" and "red states." In some respects Robertson represents a stereotype, the stereotype that affluent, educated Americans have of "hicks" and "rednecks."
    What role does religion play in all of this? One recent commentator, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, describes rural America this way: it is a place where hunters convene, fundamentalist Christians think that biblical literalism is a virtue, and there are millions of "Duck Dynasty" fans. And what are the marks of "fundamentalist Christians"? Ms. Parker mentions two: 1) they think that "biblical literalism is a virtue," and 2) they find "refuge in the toxic swamp of moral certitude."
    In all fairness to Ms. Parker, she appears to be criticizing liberal stereotypes of rural Americans as much as she does fundamentalist Christians themselves. But even so, the picture she paints of fundamentalists is hardly a flattering one.
    First of all, what exactly is a "fundamentalist"? Today just about the only people who would claim the term for themselves are a relatively small number of evangelical Christians who are noted for their extreme separatist mentality (many of them would want to distance themselves from "evangelicalism," as being too compromising). Most conservative evangelical Christians, however, would value "biblical literalism" and "find refuge" in "moral certitude." And what, we might ask, is so terrible about that?
    When we interpret the Bible literally we are simply following the historic Protestant approach to Scripture. Our aim is to ascertain the meaning of the text intended by the original human author. We look at the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the text, as well as the context – both the immediate context in the book as well as the historical context in which it was written. The technical name for this is "grammatico-historical exegesis," and it is based on the simple faith that words have meaning and sentences convey thought. Or to put it another way, I read the Bible pretty much the same way that I read Ms. Parker's editorials. I assume that she is a rational, intelligent person who is capable of saying what she means. Is my faith misplaced?
    And what is the alternative to biblical literalism? How are we supposed to interpret the text?
    Are we to suppose that the Bible is an arcane, mystical book with all kinds of hidden meanings? That we are to find our own personal meaning somewhere between the lines of the text? In actual practice what often happens is this: we begin with our own preconceived notions of what we think the text should have said (let's say, about sex, for example), and then we try by various artifices to make it say what we want it to say. We can pick and choose those passages that we think are relevant, or invent a context to make it appear that the text says something different from what it appears to say. Or we can look for a hidden, symbolic meaning. But what we wind up with is a make-believe theology wholly concocted out of our own imagination. It can hardly be called "truth."
    Whichever way we choose to do it, however, it is fundamentally dishonest. We are pretending to go to the Bible for answers when in reality we are reading our own ideas back into the text. Would it not make more sense to do what most common sense people do – to drop the pretense and discard the Bible altogether? To consign it to some dusty shelf in the library basement?
    We remember, during our youth, hearing preacher whose name we have long since forgotten, lay down this rule of interpretation: "If the plain sense makes horse sense, seek no other sense." That has been our rule ever since.
    And then what about the idea that "fundamentalism finds refuge in the toxic swamp of moral certitude"? Well, yes, apart from the "toxic swamp" part, this is true. But what makes moral certitude a "toxic swamp"?
    At this point Ms. Parker has put her finger on the central issue facing western culture today. For centuries, millennia really, Western civilization was rooted in the idea that there is a moral order to the universe. Our country's founding Fathers could go so far as to say that "We hold these truth to be self-evident: that all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." This, in turn, implied that we live in a rationally ordered universe created by a single, all-powerful Intelligent Being. There is a distinct difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. And in the end divine justice will prevail. Based on this conviction our forbearers labored and fought to created "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."
    It took Charles Darwin to undermine all of this. We are now supposed to believe that everything is in a state of flux, slowly evolving toward some indeterminate future state of being. It is all the result of a blind, impersonal natural process. And so now such ideas as "self-evident truths" and "unalienable rights" are deemed a "toxic swamp"!
    How then can anyone's rights survive this moral ambiguity? Ms. Parker is likely to find herself in a position in which she cannot say with any degree of certainty that anything is absolutely right or wrong. Do we say that an unborn child has a right to life? We are accused of "legislating morality." Does a woman have a right to an abortion? That is just Ms. Parker's own personal opinion. Who says that any of it is true?
    What is happening today is that we are witnessing the last gasp of a dying civilization. That it has been left to the likes of Phil Robertson to defend what is left of Western culture says something about how far we have come. We are rapidly retreating back into barbarity. That is something to be mourned rather than applauded.