Faith and Scholarship

009

Several times in the past few months, editor Hershel Shanks has suggested that I write a column on the relationship between faith and the academic discipline of biblical scholarship. His suggestion was motivated in part by the letters to the editor generated by recent columns.

Many letters contained variations of three different questions. How can I be Christian and say the things I say? What is the relationship between historical scholarship and Christian belief? What is the relationship between “historical truth” and “truth”; must historical narratives in the Bible be considered really to have happened in order for them to be true in other important senses?

Rather than treating the above questions one by one, I will make nine brief interconnecting statements that, taken together, do much to describe how I combine academic biblical scholarship with being a Christian. Although I write as a Christian, I do not thereby intend to exclude non-Christians from the conversation.

1 God: I see reality as “more” than the world of matter and energy disclosed by the scientific worldview, which emerged in the Enlightenment. This “more” is non-material and yet real, and, just as important, it can be known. Perceived in various kinds of non-ordinary experiences, this reality—“the sacred”—is known across cultures by a variety of names. I regard all these names as variations of “God” or “Spirit.” Thus I see God as “real” and as an element of experience, not simply an article of belief.

2. The Bible: I view the Bible as the response of one broad cultural stream to the experience of God. Its origin is not super-natural but human, generated by two ancient communities, Israel and the early Christian movement. It tells us what they experienced of God, said about God and believed about God, as well as how they responded to God in worship, devotion and daily life. Its voices express how they saw things, not how God sees things. It includes the genius of their insights, images and stories, as well as the limitations of their vision.

3. Interpreting the Bible: All reading of Scripture (including a literalist approach) involves subjective interpretation. For example, to read the stories of Jesus’ birth as literal historical accounts involves an act of interpretation just as much as reading them as symbolic narratives (namely, it involves a decision to read them literally). The recognition that all interpretations are subjective does not, however, mean that all are equally good. About any interpretation, one may ask (or be asked), “What have you got to go on? Why do you read it that way?”

4. “Truth” and “historical truth” are not the same thing. To use the Genesis creation stories as an example, I do not believe that the universe was created in six days (of whatever length, even if extended to geological epochs), or that the first two people were named Adam and Eve and lived in a garden, or, for that matter, that any of the details corresponds to “how things really happened.” These are simply ancient Israel’s creation stories. Yet their truth seems clear to me: Everything comes from God. There is more “truth” as well, including the powerful symbolization of human life as lived outside of paradise, in exile, east of Eden.

5. The truth of Christianity does not depend on the literal truth or historical infallibility of the Bible. To use a specific example, do we as Christians believe in the resurrection of Jesus because we have infallible accounts from eyewitnesses, in other words, because the Gospel stories of Easter “prove” that the resurrection really happened? Some Christians do, and I have heard Easter sermons like this. But the approach seems backwards to me. I would argue that the truth of Easter does not depend on whether there really was an empty tomb, or whether anything happened to the body of Jesus. The truth of Easter is that Jesus continued to be experienced as a living reality after his death, though in a radically new way, and not just in the time of his first followers but to this day. It is because Jesus is known as living reality that we take the Easter stories seriously, not the other way around. (And taking them seriously need not mean taking them literally.)

6. “Believing” cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgment about whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, but my believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether or not he really did do it. So also with the story of Jesus walking on the water: Believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether he really did do it. “Belief” cannot be the basis for a historical conclusion; it has no direct relevance.

7. I do not understand “faith” as “believing.” I did when I was younger. I thought faith meant “believing certain things to be true,” especially the Bible and central 054Christian doctrines. I now understand that “faith” means something quite different than giving my mental assent to a claim of truth. It involves a much deeper level of the self, “the heart,” and it has to do with whether one lives in a trusting or anxious relationship with God. The opposite of faith is anxiety, not doubt.

8. Accordingly, I do not define “Christian” primarily in terms of believing. Rather, I define a Christian as a person who lives his or her relationship with God within the framework of Christian tradition and community. (Just as a Muslim does so within the framework of the Muslim tradition, a Jew does so within the framework of the Jewish tradition, etc.) This relationship entails a centering in, and loyalty to, God as known in Jesus Christ. I do not see the Christian tradition as exclusively true, or the Bible as the unique and infallible revelation of God. I see it as one of several authentic religious traditions. The point is not really “to believe in the Bible,” but “to live within it,” that is, to live within its images and stories and vision of life. For me, it is “home.” That is why I am a Christian rather than something else.

9. Why study and value the Bible if it 055is not the unique and infallible revelation of God? For me as a Christian, the Bible is “sacred scripture.” As the ancient witness to what our ancestors knew of God and said about God, the Bible mediates the sacred for us, or, to say the same thing, it is sacramental. As a Christian, I am committed to a continuing conversation with this particular collection of documents; it is our primary ancient dialogical partner. That is why, for me, investing a lifetime of energy in its study is worthwhile.

I do not claim that my way of seeing things is “the way things are.” But this is how I put it together. And, ultimately, that is all any of us can do: We put it together in the way that makes sense to us.

Several times in the past few months, editor Hershel Shanks has suggested that I write a column on the relationship between faith and the academic discipline of biblical scholarship. His suggestion was motivated in part by the letters to the editor generated by recent columns. Many letters contained variations of three different questions. How can I be Christian and say the things I say? What is the relationship between historical scholarship and Christian belief? What is the relationship between “historical truth” and “truth”; must historical narratives in the Bible be considered really to have happened in order for them […]