I may be a little late to weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding Richard Dawkin's recent article on Pat Robertson's controversial remarks about the earthquake in Haiti, but I felt I needed to say something about an issue that is deeply connected with it. Many Christians were quick to criticize Robertson for implying that the earthquake was a sort of divine punishment, but Dawkins insists that Robertson is the real Christian here for affirming a belief in a God who seeks to send disaster and punishment on those who disobey Him, which is the God that the Bible reveals. Dawkins' view has been affirmed by other atheists (over at Debunking Christianity there has been some recent bickering about it), who argue that Christians may very well want to disagree with Robertson, but in doing so they are being unfaithful to the tradition that they claim to represent.
The issue that I find troubling here is the presumption of people like Dawkins to tell Christians how they should interpret the Bible and Christian tradition. This is by no means the first time that people have argued that the Christian Church has misunderstood the Bible, going back to the earliest decades and centuries after the death and resurrection of Christ. As Craig Allert notes in A High View of Scripture? the early Church fathers argued against heresies that sought to appropriate scripture, by claiming that the Bible is the Church's book and it is the Church's privilege and responsibility to interpret it. While I don't think this means that only Christians are allowed to weigh in on issues of Biblical interpretation, I think that this is a very important point. Those outside the Church may have their opinions about the Bible ought to be interpreted, but they should not presume to claim the authority to tell the faith community who possesses these scriptures that they have the proper interpretation and that other Christians have it all wrong.
I realize this raises the issue of the fact that many different Christians have varying views of how to read the Bible and often take issue with the way that other Christians read it. This is true and important, but I do not think decisive over the issue of who can presume to tell another how to interpret a sacred text. I believe there is an important distinction that needs to be made between in-house debates and those with "outsiders." Debates within Christianity are carried out within a larger shared context of faith and belief that makes it distinct from other debates. In the same way, it would be inappropriate for a young earth creationist to tell evolutionary biologists which view of evolution is the proper understanding of it (no doubt with the aim of showing that this view is untenable or unethical). If someone rejects evolution then they probably should not presume to tell those who accept it how best to interpret it. That matter of interpretation is best left in the hands of those in the community that affirm it, which in this example is obviously the community of other evolutionary biologists. They may disagree with one another over how evolution ought to be interpreted, but surely someone who rejects evolution altogether has little standing in such a debate.
This is not a problem unique to only Christian-atheist debates. I have read Christian apologists seeking to convert Muslims who argue that if Muslims take the Koran seriously they must believe such and such (inevitably unsavory) belief. The problem I have with this is that we as Christians have no right to tell Muslims how they must or should interpret their own holy writings. We may disagree with these writings and may not accept them as authentic or complete revelation, but that does not mean that we get to tell them how to interpret them. That privilege lies with the community that affirms it. Obviously a Christian who becomes a scholar of Middle Eastern religion would have a bit more authority to speak to such matters, but she still has no right to tell that faith community that they are wrong in their interpretation of their own work.
I am not trying to say that only Christians can weigh in on Biblical debates and interpretation. There are many competent and excellent scholars in the field who are not Christians who have important perspectives to offer on the Bible, but even they do not really have any say in telling Christians now that they are "wrong" in how they read the Bible now. Clearly many Christians reject Robertson's (and Dawkins') interpretation of parts of the Bible, and do so for reasons that are just as much rooted in the history and tradition of Christianity and the words of the Bible, and it is wrong to say that we are misunderstanding our own tradition when we do so.
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What's an atheist to do?
ReplyDeleteThat's a fascinating chart for sure. There's something about fundamentalist strains of American Christianity that has a propensity for amazingly creative charts:-)
ReplyDeleteI just don't think that pointing to disagreements is a viable way to "debunk" something. Again, I'll use the issue of evolution as an example: if I can find compelling points in the views of say Stephen Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Simon Conway Morris, even though they all have major conceptual disagreements about the nature of evolution, does that mean that I have somehow "debunked" evolution, and furthermore, does that entitle me to assert a creationist position as if it were the only plausible answer? I think the answer is clearly no.
Disagreements are not the mark of incoherence, just as the fact that Christians continue to find new insights and lenses with which to view the Bible does not mean that one Christianity has been "killed" so to speak and another has simply been concocted to keep it going. That sort of natural growth and reflection does not discredit anything anymore than the refinement of a scientific theory "kills" the discipline of physics for introducing different conceptual approaches, for example. I can easily see a young earth creationist taking the same line as you do with Christianity, bemoaning that some scientific theory has been resurrected in a new guise after having been "debunked." I think that would show a grave misunderstanding of science, and I also believe that it shows a grave misunderstanding of religion.
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ReplyDeleteso who is competent to interpret scripture? Who is authoritative? How do you know when you've got it right?
ReplyDeleteHow will it ever be relevant until there is an authoritative interpretation, and indeed why would any authoritative text need to be interpreted? One of the distinguishing characteristics of authoritative text is clarity.
The question isn't who is or isn't competent to interpret scripture, but rather who has the right to tell someone what a text should mean to them. I am saying that it doesn't make sense to tell a community that possesses a text and interprets it that they are being unfaithful to their tradition and need to abandon their interpretation in favor of the interpretation of the tradition that an outsider is providing.
ReplyDeleteNo text is self-interpreting, so interpretation is always going to be necessary. There isn't a magic moment when you can be confident that you have an interpretation right for all time. I think we may be using different understandings of authoritative, while clarity may be desirable I don't think it makes a text authoritative or not. Authoratative is a matter of who is willing to invest a text with authority, it isn't something that comes from the text itself.