It happens so infrequently that I’m always a little surprised in the moment I realize that it just happened. I recently found myself disagreeing with Fred. In all honesty, it’s been happening a lot since the move to Patheos, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised any more. But in this case I completely disagreed with him and responded with, “No, that’s wrong.”
The crazies thing about it was that it was a point of theology. I have a hard time saying the Fred is wrong about theology, since I usually agree with his interpretations of things. Inasmuch as I can, at least. He usually says the things that I would say if I were still a Christian after all I’ve been through over the last few years.
The Patheos thing, though, has ended up being really interesting for me as a reader of Slacktivist. See, back at the old Typepad site, Fred was relatively insulated. He was disconnected and could be ignored. The insular community of self-policing commenters undoubtedly helped immensely. Anyone who disagreed was quickly either shooed out or forced to toe the line.[1]
Either way, ever since Fred moved he doesn’t seem to have only his Greek chorus thanking him in every other comment. This means that he’s been grinding out an awful lot of posts lately in defense of his view of what Christianity is. In this I wanted to say, “should be,” but Fred works in is as much as ought and, when it gets right down to it, he’s often holding the line on what the Bible actually says v. what his opponents within Christianity says the Bible says, so Fred gets the “is” as much as the “ought.”
Since the big fight in Evangelical Christianity has been what Fred calls Team Hell against Rob Bell,[2] that’s been where the grind occurs. In a recent post, Fred enlisted the assistance of Eugene Peterson:
We should read the entire Bible in terms of what drives toward Christ. Everything has to be interpreted through Christ. Well, if you do that, you’re going to end up with this religion of grace and forgiveness. The only people Jesus threatens are the Pharisees. But everybody else gets pretty generous treatment. There’s very little Christ, very little Jesus, in these people who are fighting Rob Bell.
My instant response was, “You can’t read the Bible that way.”
See, I agree with the final three sentences of that quote.[3] I completely disagree with the first two sentences. I kinda-sorta agree with the third sentence, but only as it follows from the sentences I disagree with, which makes it hard for me to actually agree with the sentence.
The problem is, though, that since I cannot agree with the first two sentences, I find that the rest of that paragraph falls completely apart. And since Fred agrees with the quote above, I disagree with Fred. Moreover, I can say with 100% certainty that Fred is wrong.
See, Eugene Peterson is working with an “ought,” not an “is.” It’s right there: “We should read the entire Bible in terms of what drives toward Christ.” The problem is that we cannot read the Bible in that way. Since we cannot, then, we actually should not read the Bible in that way.
That semester I left a church because of an attack on Rob Bell and discovered Paul Tillich and Martin Buber I finally learned to read the Bible as a historian. The semester before I had finally found out what it means to read the Bible as a Jew. What I learned in doing so was, as much as anything, that the way I had been reading the Bible and the way I had been taught to read the Bible in the various Evangelical churches was wrong.
See, they wanted to read the Bible in terms of what drives towards Christ.[4] To do so, of course, is to ignore centuries of Jewish tradition that predated the onset of Christianity as well as the two millennia of Jewish thought that have existed concurrent to Christianity. That means that there are millions of people throughout history who have managed to read two-thirds (or, often, all) of the Christian Bible and not found that it drives toward the Christ depicted in the Gospels and their follow-up commentary[5] and have still managed to make it the basis of their own set of religious beliefs and traditions.
As such, Eugene Peterson is wrong. Perhaps Christians should read the Bible through the lens of what leads to Christ, but it is not actually possible to say, as he does, that “everything has to be interpreted through Christ.” And that’s only for those who still want to have faith in the Bible.
Reading the Bible as a historian was what killed the whole thing for me. True, it was a slow death, but it was a death indeed. When I read the Bible for the first time as a historian I switched from an “ought” to an “is.” See, that was one of the problems within Christianity. Even those who weren’t sold on the infallibility of Scripture angle and were willing to entertain the notion that there might be flaws still basically said, “But we ought to read it as though everything is on the up and up.”
The problem is that no matter how much you argue that the historicity of the Bible doesn’t matter, no matter how much you want to believe, as Rob Bell does, that we need the Jesus story even if we do not have Jesus, if we cannot trust the Bible, then there is no point in accepting the central premise of Christianity.[6] If we take the story of Adam and Eve as pure allegory, then we take the story of Jesus on the cross as pure allegory, what we are left with is, well, the third section of Buber’s I and Thou, a concept of the attempt to reconnect in a meaningful way with the divine. If we get to that point we then hit a many paths to god sort of scenario, whereupon Christianity simply takes its place amongst the many paths to god.
Ultimately, then, Christianity becomes a matter of taste.
This, of course, is what Team Hell rails against. Without eternal Heaven as the carrot and eternal Hell as the stick, Christianity isn’t special. Without an eternally damning god there’s no compulsion to choose Christianity over any or no faith.
Ultimately it’s a fight they will lose. But they won’t lose because they’re wrong. They’ll lose because the majority of people would rather believe something closer to what Fred and Peterson and Bell propose and Team Hell would rather banish anyone who disagrees with them to the outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth instead. Secretly, too, many on Team Hell will relish the loss. It’s more fun to play the martyr, after all. There’s often more money in it, too.
As for me…well, I realized something.
See, when I left Christianity I was afraid to tell anyone. I thought that someone would come along and try to evangelize me and I would be too afraid to do anything other than meekly go back to something I could no longer believe, at which point I’d just be miserable until the next break. Then I ran in to some of those evangelists and could see through all their arrogant bluster and self-important sophistry. Still, I would often say that if I had spent more time around folks like Fred Clark then I might still be a Christian today. I mostly assumed it was because I simply wouldn’t have been forced to confront the all-out wrongness of my Evangelical subculture, but I would sometimes wonder if I had just missed something.
I didn’t. In the moment I read the quote Fred had posted from Eugene Peterson and realized it was completely wrong I realized that for the last few years I have regularly been engaging one of the finest minds Christianity has to offer and one of the greatest ambassadors it could ask for. And even though I agreed with Fred’s conclusion and stance, my only response to his underlying assumption was, “But that’s wrong.”
It’s tremendously freeing.
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[1]There was that massive tempest in a teacup over the move, what with the community fracture and all. I haven’t really been an active participant for the last two years, so I think of Slacktivist as being what it was in 2006-2008. Truth is, though, it had changed. Accusations of insularity and echo-chambers that were met with more-or-less justifiable condescending sneers in a few years ago were probably right on the money, as evidenced by the fracture, where a lot of people decided that they couldn’t go to the new place because they wouldn’t be able to stay in their safe place.
Which is what made this post utterly magnificent.
[2]I have nothing to say about the latest Rob Bell controversy. All I know about it is second- or third-hand. From my interpretation of others’ interpretations of what Bell has to say I think I am more or less in agreement with his interpretation of the idea of Hell, i.e. that Hell is a fiction built on Milton and Dante as opposed to the Bible. Of course I don’t know that Bell put it that way, as that’s how I put it and, if I recall, how Fred Clark has put it a time or two.
What I do know, though, is that Rob Bell is part of the reason I left a church when I was out at Western Illinois University. Specifically, the pastor stood up and spent half an hour haranguing the emergent church movement and took great umbrage at Rob Bell’s announcement that the historicity of Jesus didn’t matter so much as the story itself. Even though that was the first I’d ever heard of that specific concept, I agreed with Bell. I never spent another Sunday morning at that church.
Later that semester I was introduced to Paul Tillich and finally actually read Martin Buber’s I and Thou. I discovered that Bell was not working on a new interpretation of anything.
[3]With a caveat: we have stories of Jesus directly threatening Pharisees. But, in general, Jesus didn’t seem to like lazy people and assholes, either.
[4]Kinda. They wanted to read it in terms of the Christ they wanted their Jesus to be. That Jesus was, by and large, petty, cruel, self-absorbed, greedy, and prone to playing favorites, which is not at all the Jesus that Eugene Peterson, Fred Clark, or I find depicted in the Gospels. Which is, ultimately, why I can still say that I agree with Fred or Eugene on their interpretation of Christianity without agreeing about Christianity.
[5]This also ignores the billion or three Muslims who have shared the same Biblical traditions but have not shared in the idea of Jesus as divine savior. We could also probably talk about the various Christian sects that were somewhere between not on the same page and outright heretics in here, too.
[6]It’s slightly different for Judaism, as the Bible itself is a cultural and traditional touchpoint. The festivals and feasts are, by this point, as much about being Jewish as they are about believing in a religion named Judaism, so it’s entirely possible to be thoroughly secular and thoroughly Jewish. It makes little sense to be a thoroughly secular Christian, however, at least in modern Western society.
this brings me to a COMPLETELY tangetal question:
i have been told, by people i trust, that Lilith really really really REALLY is in the Torah, in Genesis, as the first women and kicked out because Adam didn't want an equal, he want a subserviant woman.
but - i have never been shown where it says this. just told that it is true.
have you ever seen it? [in theory, i could go to a rabbi and ask, but that seems incredibly presumptious and rude, ESPECIALLY when it's just for a game i'm running]
that aside, Hell is the #1 reason i never converted to Christianity. to mis-quote Ghandi "Christ, i like your Christ, he was a saint and had great ideas. but Christians suck and want me to burn for eternity in a place of torment because i see the Divine differently"
Posted by: Elizabeth | 03/28/2011 at 02:36 AM
Geez, why don't you try asking me a hard question on a Monday morning? These softballs are just so...something something...
Anyway, the short answer is, "No." This requires a longer explanation, though.
Lilith, like many other things in post-Babylonian Captivity Judaism and, therefore, Christianity, appears to have been taken from Mesopotamian and Babylonian myth. There were the Lilitu, which were demons who were often described in terms that made them out to be succubi, basically. That may or may not also have been the name for a sacred prostitute to Ishtar. The term may or may not have made it in to the Hebrew Bible as "lilit," a much-debated reference in the book of Isaiah that might be a post-Captivity reference to the Lilitu or might just be a lost term for a certain unclean animal. As "lilit" is a hapax legomenon (Latin term for "word that only appears once." Very hard term to use in normal conversation...), there's really no saying what it was supposed to mean.
The Lilith story as we know it today was a more-or-less Medieval invention. Its roots actually go back to some of the earliest Rabbinical tradition, but as the Rabbinical tradition started post-Babylonian Captivity, that doesn't really help the case that Lilith herself has been around from the beginning. The answer to that is probably much simpler and the same as the root of how someone can say, "See! It's right there in Genesis!"
There are two creation stories in Genesis. In the first, Yhwh creates man and woman at the same time. In the second, Yhwh creates Adam from the dust of the ground, then creates Eve from his rib bone. Those who ascribe to the Lilith story say that these are actually two distinct creation stories. In the first, man and woman were created at the same time as equals, but rather than Eve, the woman was Lilith. Lilith then said, "I am equal to you," and refused to submit to Adam. So she was kicked out and Yhwh went for take two, whereupon Eve was created.
The reason you can say that's the case is because the Genesis 1 creation story goes through Day 6. On Day 6 Yhwh creates man and woman at the same time. Genesis 2 then starts with Day 7, where Adam is alone and Yhwh creates the Garden of Eden and gives him charge over all the Earth. After this Yhwh pulls the, "It is not good for him to be alone," routine and creates Eve from his rib.
The reason you can say it's not the case is because this appears to be two different but similar Semitic creation stories that have been tacked together and harmonized somewhat poorly. This isn't particularly surprising, as most ancient cultures had multiple different, often contradictory, creation and origin stories. So seeing two stories like this that are similar but obviously different isn't that hard to accept.
So, basically, the point is that if you want to believe there's a Lilith in the Genesis account you can find her. If you don't want to believe there's a Lilith story you don't have to see her. Christianity ignores the idea of Lilith and she didn't really gain much traction within Judaism for about 1500 years after she was first proposed. So that's a lot of tradition weighted against her.
As for me...well, since I'm in the camp that says there was no Garden of Eden I don't really care. But as a storyteller, I'm always on the side of whatever makes for the most interesting narrative, for whatever that's worth.
Posted by: Geds | 03/28/2011 at 10:23 AM