Readers Reply

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Honest Faith vs. Blind Belief

BR and Biblical Archaeology Review have shown me that there is a place for liberal Christians in the world. As I enter my freshman year of college this fall as a religious studies major, I congratulate BR for showing that there is more faith in, honest questioning than any amount of blind belief.

Reading “Readers Reply” Is Enough

Please cancel my subscription. All I had to do was read the letters to the editor, and I knew I didn’t want this magazine.

Intellectual Suicide Unnecessary

I have been reading BR ever since you began publishing, and I think your August 1994 issue is the best one you have ever done. Congratulations, and thank you!

The excitement begins in the always lively “Readers Reply,” where you twice promise to give rebuttal time to literalist scholars. Then comes a brilliant piece by Marcus Borg, which those same literalist scholars will have a very hard time dealing with: “Thinking About the Second Coming,” BR 10:04. Borg briefly yet clearly outlines what is wrong with some literalist interpretations of Revelation and related passages, then shows how a critical reading of these passages makes better spiritual sense. The final two paragraphs are simple but brilliant in highlighting the spiritual importance of the way we choose to read the Bible.

As if all this weren’t enough, we are treated to a story on the report of the Pontifical Biblical Commission endorsing the historical-critical method of reading the Bible and explicitly criticizing the literalist approach. The Roman Catholic Church (which I serve as a parish priest) is a solidly conservative communion, one firmly committed to the “Faith of our Fathers.” The fact that such a conservative communion is firmly on the side of a modern reading of the Bible should reassure those who are tempted to think that they are faced with a terrible choice: Should I give up my faith, or my mind? Friends, there is no need at all to commit intellectual suicide in order to keep your faith.

I add my own personal experience of 45 years of reading, study and prayer in the modern critical tradition to proclaim to all who want to know that reading the Bible this way enhances, deepens and purifies one’s faith and spiritual life. Go ahead take the plunge! You’ll love it.

Following up on the two letters in “Readers Reply” you refer to, we are in contact with several conservative scholars and hopefully these efforts will result in articles.—Ed.

Let’s See More Conservatives

To read BR is to remain largely ignorant of the contemporary intellectual vitality of, conservative Christianity. Instead of printing letters from uneducated Christians who think that any publication with the word “Bible” in its title must be more theologically orthodox, why not print a few more articles by conservative scholars? You’d increase your readership, and what’s more, you’d gain an increase in respect from the readers you already have, including this one.

See answer to previous letter. There is some question, however, about the “contemporary intellectual vitality of conservative [Christian scholarship].” The following is a quotation from a New York Times article (Sept. 10, 1994) by Peter Steinfels:

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“Evangelical Christians… [are] the most religiously active and potentially the most politically powerful religious force in the nation. And yet, [they] have let their religious tradition sink into intellectual penury, largely bereft of the kind of vigorous intellectual life that would engage their faith with…modern learning…Evangelicals… sponsor dozens of seminaries, scores of colleges and hundreds of radio and television outlets but have not one research university nor one journal that deals [seriously] with modern culture and current events….

“Steinfels relies heavily on a book by the highly regarded historian of American religion, Mark A. Noll, entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994). Noll is an evangelical Christian and the McManis Professor of Christian Thought at the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois.—Ed.

Unintended Sex

Praise for Snyder from a Student

Thank you for “Unintended Sex Leads to Unintended Fall,” BR 10:04, concerning sexual harassment, the Chicago Theological Seminary and Professor Graydon Snyder. Your article was of particular significance to me because I am a CTS graduate (class of 1993). I was there when all this started, and I know all the people involved, including the woman who filed the charges. For more than two years I, and many other members of the CTS community, have been in turmoil. I believe that none of this had to happen; it could all have been prevented.

CTS is proud, and rightly so, to be a multi-cultural, multi-racial and inter-denominational institution open to and affirming of all persons. CTS has an outstanding faculty, most of them ordained ministers, representing both liberal and moderate Protestant denominations. Each professor has his or her own perspective, which is freely shared with students who are, in turn, encouraged to speak their own minds. Students and teachers are regarded as equals and almost always use first names.

CTS tries very hard to be politically correct. Even after three years there I’m not entirely sure what political correctness is, but I think that to be politically correct means to never offend anyone in any way at any time for any reason. That’s not humanly possible; it’s not always desirable. There are times when every one of us needs to be offended.

Graydon Snyder was my New Testament professor; he is also my friend. He taught me a lot, not only about the New Testament but also about life and ministry. During one quarter, he set out to convince me that Paul is not the “jerk” I’d believed him to be for 30 years; he did it. Then he informed me that I’m actually Pauline. That came as quite a shock; but, since Grady’s one, too, that’s not so bad.

During these last two years I’ve often thought about what’s happening at CTS, and I do agree with Grady’s conclusions about the nature and origin of all this. There are ways he doesn’t “fit in” with certain other faculty members—some are considerably younger, none share his Pietist tradition and he is not always politically correct. The man has a vivid imagination, an off-beat sense of humor and remains his unique self at all times.

I will conclude much as Grady did in your article—he was, indeed, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I, and many other students, are glad we were there at the same time. I, too, never thought that a liberal seminary would tell him what not to teach. Or tell me what to learn or what not to learn and from whom.

Berserk Feminism

Let’s hope that cases such as that of Professor Snyder will awaken people to the fact that feminism is not a quest for fairness and equality but a dangerous, pernicious form of lunacy that is destroying the foundations of the family and of free inquiry.

Sex and Prestige

Don’t Cry “Rape”

Ken Stone in his “Sexual Power and Political Prestige,” BR 10:04, says that “The sexual relation between Absalom and David’s concubines, for example, can be considered rape.” Why? The text does not say so, and just previously we have had the rape of Tamar in 009which the text says Amnon forced her. It is speculation for Stone to say the phrase “Absalom went in to his father’s concubines” means rape. We can just as easily speculate that the concubines had the freedom to make a decision, and that the decision to have sexual relations with Absalom was a political one, a belief that Absalom would be the winner in the struggle with David. Which would be more potent in “the sight of all Israel”—Absalom’s forcing himself on the concubines or their willing acknowledgement of his kingship?

Truncated Bible

The Bible Has Little Relevance to Our Culture

Jacob Milgrom (“An Amputated Bible, Peradventure?” BR 10:04) completely misses the point of The Bible Designed To Be Read As Living Literature. One would think that the title alone would have given him a clue.

He is offended that anyone would dare eliminate the legal codes of Leviticus from an edition of the Bible. He failed to notice, or didn’t think it important to point out, that also eliminated are all genealogies, census reports, doublets, repetitions (in the Synoptics), doubtful letters attributed to Paul and even entire books (Chronicles)—even worse, the canonical order of the Bible has been thoroughly rearranged so that the Prophets and Epistles, for example, are given in historical order. He does hint at all this revisionism by calling the book a “grotesquely dismembered King James Bible” but fails to ask, much less answer, the obvious question: Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?

Perhaps it is inevitable that scholars of Mr. Milgrom’s caliber, whose whole lives are spent in biblical exegesis and historical investigation, should fail to note a very disturbing trend—namely, that nobody reads the Bible much anymore. A book that was once the connective tissue of our culture now seems to have very little relevance to it, outside of academic circles and evangelical churches. The Old Testament in particular has faded almost entirely from the collective memory. I doubt if 80 percent of the people in the mainline pews could identify Nehemiah, know the story of Ruth (much less the story of Esther) or could write down the names of the Patriarchs in order of their appearance. If that’s true of churchgoers, we can only guess at the percentage for the general population. And when it comes to high school seniors and college students, the ignorance is total.

Ernest Sutherland Bates, the first editor of the book in question in 1936, thought one problem was the Bible itself. It is essentially unreadable, no matter the translation, littered as it is with a thousand stumbling blocks that invite the general reader to put it down and never pick it up again. How many people, one wonders, have tried over the past hundred years to read the Bible cover to cover and never made it through Genesis? His solution was to publish an edition that contained mostly the narrative portions of the Bible. If encountering the Bible first as a literary experience stimulated the reader to return to the standard text, wonderful. If not, at least the reader would have some grasp of the book. In accomplishing this mission, by the way, Bates was the first to break out the poems and songs in the text, and he also applied other literary devices, such as setting Job as a philosophical drama and the Song of Songs as a wedding idyll. The result is an edition that is inviting, startling and refreshing.

I suppose it is inevitable that academicians would bridle at Bates’ effort, and it would be no surprise if literalists worked themselves up into a serious lather over it. But for the rest of us, to whom the Bible has been largely an impenetrable jumble, it opens up the great book as a literary work and allows for a wholly new and enlightening experience. I am delighted that Simon & Schuster decided to bring it out again, and am honored to have been selected to revise Professor Bates’ original work.

As to Mr. Milgrom’s criticisms of the King James: enough, please. Everyone knows its translation is outdated in some respects. Nobody should depend on it for their courses in a theology department. But for beauty and an intelligence that speaks directly to the human heart, no other translation comes close. Once again, The Bible Designed To Be Read As Living Literature is, as its title states clearly, a literary endeavor. It relies on the King James translation because very few works in the English language have ever achieved its almost breath-taking quality.

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Catholic Report

Realizing the “Spiritual Sense” of the Text

Shame on BR. In “The Catholic Church and Bible Interpretation,” BR 10:04, you praise the Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Roman Catholic Church for its rebuke of fundamentalism and its acceptance of historical criticism. Yet you fail to present the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s criticism of the historical-critical method alongside its praise. In effect, the PBC reclaims the tradition of spiritual exegesis.

“The spiritual sense results from setting the text in relation to real facts which are not foreign to it; the paschal event, in all its inexhaustible richness, which constitutes the summit of the divine intervention in the history of Israel, to the benefit of all mankind…”

The biblical scholars who carry the historical-critical method to extremes (e.g., the Jesus Seminar participants) fail badly in this respect of looking at biblical history with the eyes of Christian faith. They divorce the spiritual sense from the historical sense.

In fairness to your reader, I believe you need to reread the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s report and include a fuller critique of its biblical hermeneutics.

The Church Is Fundamentalist on Gays

Thanks to BR for the quality article about the Catholic Church and Bible interpretation. However, I have one point to raise: It is ironic to me that the Church, through the report of this Pontifical Commission, seeks to show itself as liberal, even to the point of criticizing (implicitly Protestant) fundamentalism as “dangerous,” yet its latest catechism continues to refuse the priesthood to women and will not sanction the God-given sexual orientation of lesbians and gay men like myself. Their basis of exclusion is the Holy Scripture, the literal interpretation of which the Pontifical Commission called “dangerous.” An excerpt from the report reads “It [fundamentalism] accepts the literal reality of an ancient, out-of-date cosmology simply because it is found expressed in the Bible; this relationship between culture and faith. Its relying upon a non-critical reading of certain texts of the Bible serves to reinforce political ideas and social attitudes that are marked by prejudices… quite contrary to the Christian gospel” (emphasis added).

I’m a non-literalist, but I had to defend the fundamentalists because the Catholic Church has given the false impression that it has no fundamentalism of its own to work through. Perhaps the Vatican should remove the log from its own eye before it seeks to remove the speck from anyone else’s.

Who’s Fundamentalist Now?

How ironic it is that the Roman Catholic Church should fault any wing of Protestantism for being “natively literalistic.” The overwhelming majority of even fundamentalist pastors and parishioners recognize such figures of speech as similes, parables, metaphors, allegories, etc., in Scripture for what they are. But the Catholic Church has persistently refused to admit that the “mystical statement” of Jesus, “This is my body my… blood” is but metaphor: “This represents or symbolizes my body…my blood.”

Borg

Before We Focus on the Second Coming, Let’s Not Forget the First

Marcus Borg touched on some interesting points in his piece, “Thinking About the Second Coming,” BR 10:04. Unlike Mr. Borg, I cannot say with such certainty that the New Testament does not address the second coming of, Christ” in our time or at any future time. Still, I find myself in agreement with many of his other arguments.

Borg is right in asserting that many Christians who see “the end” as being near are cavalier about the well-being of the environment, resources or even long-term aspects of social justice, education, etc. Many who focus upon Christ’s 013second coming tend to ignore the impact of His first coming, and subsequent manifestation in our lives through the Spirit, sacrament, the Church, the Bible—into our very hearts and minds. End-timers also often see themselves as a “special, chosen generation” and look with disdain upon Christians of other periods, who were not “blessed like us” to see the return of the Lord. This is an insult to Christ, who died for all, and made every believer a part of His body.

Borg is also correct in his summation—that the Christian life should be “about the coming of Christ into one’s life, which produces a transformed way of seeing and being and living,” and which “leads to a loving of humans, of life and of Earth itself.” After all, if Christ is your Lord and Saviour already, what difference does it make what happens to you at His second coming? You are His, and He is “with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

A College Student Praises Borg

After reading Marcus Borg’s column, subscribers are going to cancel their subscription. But not me. Other subscribers may laugh and write that they love the humor value of BR; not me. I’m writing to ask permission if I can photocopy these articles and pass them out in my Sunday School class. I think they’re great. I’d like to thank publicly Professor Bruce Reeves of Pleasant Hill, California, for introducing me to BR.

I’m still doing my undergraduate work and appreciate BR for the valuable sources it leads me to BR is great because the writers care about the material. Borg and his colleagues seem more than just intellectually curious about the Bible, God and Jesus Christ. I like that.

To all those would-be subscription cancelers, look at the last sentence in Marcus Borg’s column, “Such a transformation [Christ into one’s life] leads to a loving of humans, life and of Earth itself.” What more of a creed do you require Borg before you believe his sincerity?

The Bible as Grand Fiction

I admire Marcus Borg’s willingness to address the issue of whether the Easter story contains fact or fiction, especially in his reply to the letter by Dennis P. McMahon in the August issue (Readers Reply, BR 10:04). Yet the distinction between fact and fiction need not be so ambiguous. Borg says that metaphorical and symbolic language falls between fact and fiction. That may be true for the interpretation we give to facts, but no amount of symbolic use of language can create a fact.

Whether my love is a red rose may depend on my viewpoint, but my love’s existence doesn’t. If I say a tomb doesn’t contain a corpse, I don’t see how my use of symbols allows me sincerely and honestly to say the body wasn’t there if it was.

For me, the honest approach comes to acknowledging these stories are fiction, plain and simple. They may contain great wisdom but not facts. So I say to Borg, get off the fence and openly acknowledge that these Bible stories are fiction; grand fiction, whose meaning does not depend 014on their literal truthfulness.

The Condescending Attitude of Literal Scholars

Marcus Borg’s eschatological theology, as reflected in his August 1994 column, is certainly a common one among liberal scholars, but I was irritated by his repeated, smug reference to his view as the prevailing one among “mainline scholars.”

Perhaps “mainline scholar” needs to be defined. Is Dr. Borg claiming a viewpoint upheld by a broad academic consensus among all scholars, or is “mainline” a restrictive term limited to those scholars who begin with the assumption that there could not have been a physical Resurrection nor other miracles? Does the “mainline” consensus dismiss as unworthy, scholarship from conservative, evangelical, Orthodox or Roman Catholic scholars who claim a creedal Christian faith?

As an Episcopal minister, I can assure Dr. Borg that seminary scholarship within my own “mainline” denomination includes many who expect Jesus to come again, including some moderately liberal scholars.

What I suspect is that Dr. Borg is reflecting a condescending attitude among liberal scholars to the effect that anyone holding a traditional creedal view of the Resurrection and Parousia [Second Coming] is intellectually inferior. This attitude writes off a number of very significant theologians, including the highly respected Jurgen Moltmann, who in his Theology of Hope writes, “Christianity is to be understood as the community of those who on the ground of the resurrection of Christ wait for the kingdom of God and whose life is determined by their expectation.” Moltmann’s eschatologically-centered theology bears no resemblance to the self-centered form of popular dispensationalism which Dr. Borg lambasts.

Dr. Borg offers us a false choice between liberal and dispensationalist eschatological views and attitudes, ignoring the array of positions in-between. An excellent perspective of the middle ground is offered by an Anglican evangelical, Dr. Stephen Travis, in I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus.

Friedman vs. Van Seters

Richard Friedman’s Absurd and Arrogant Fantasy

I want to comment briefly on the confrontation between Richard Elliott Friedman and John Van Seters in the August issue of BR (“Scholars Face Off Over Age of Biblical Stories,” BR 10:04). Friedman writes as if unaware to what extent the existence of J as a very early and continuous source has been questioned in recent decades. In his review of Van Seters’s Prologue to History that precipitated the exchange (Bible Books, BR 09:06), Friedman tells us how, up to that time, he had looked out from the center of Hebrew Bible studies, occupied by himself and his friend Baruch Halpern, noticed Van Seters’s work on the fringe and decided it wasn’t worth his serious attention. The reality is, of course, the exact opposite of this absurd and arrogant fantasy. Right or wrong, Van Seters has been a significant partner in an international debate on the formation of the Pentateuch, and the putative J source in particular, for more than two decades, a debate featuring other “fringe” scholars such as Rendtorff, Blum, H. H. Schmid, Rose and Vorlander, to name only the better-known ones.

I can’t say whether Van Seters still thinks of himself as an adherent of the documentary hypothesis, but I am sure he is quite capable of deciding that for himself without Friedman’s help. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that the documentary hypothesis in its classical form can no more survive the drastically later dating of J than it can the much earlier dating of P advocated by some Israeli and American scholars.

Friedman thinks it incredible that no prose, and especially no historical prose, should have survived from the period of the monarchy. But in point of fact, if that were the case, it would not be so surprising. Texts of any length would presumably have been written on papyrus, and papyrus has a hard time surviving the Palestinian winter—witness the fact that only one, from the Wadi Muraba’at, has survived from the time of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The Babylonian Nebuzaradan [Nebuchadnezzar], in 055addition, torched the Temple and the royal palace, presumably the main depositories of historical archives. But since it seems that a first draft of the Deuteronomic History was composed before the final disaster, something at least must have survived. I doubt, though, that the prophet Jeremiah was the author of the pre-Exilic and Exilic drafts, as Friedman maintains in his (popular?) book Who Wrote the Bible? That Jeremiah would have been an octogenarian, at least, at the time of writing the second draft is only one of several reasons for looking for a different author.

Professor Blenkinsopp holds the John A. O’Brien Chair of Biblical Studies at the University of Notre Dame.—Ed.

Richard Elliott Friedman replies:

I have never exchanged an unkind word with Professor Blenkinsopp and I can think of no justification for his uncollegial letter. I have not held the view of my own work that he ascribes to me and describes as an “absurd and arrogant fantasy” (nor do I understand why he brought up Professor Halpern in this connection). The comment in my review article to which he refers was an apology to Professor Van Seters for not doing a full treatment of his work earlier. Why on earth should that provoke this outburst against the thing for which I was apologizing, and why was he moved to exaggerate and then denigrate it? Likewise, I do not know what moved him to represent me as somehow trying to decide for Van Seters whether or not he is an advocate of the documentary hypothesis, especially since I had already explained in my response to Van Seters that I meant something else by the comment in question. I also do not see the point in his repeating Van Seters’s comment that I found Van Seters’s view of history “incredible” after I have already explained that I never said that—so why go on about the survivability of papyri in winters in Israel?

Blenkinsopp’s introduction of Jeremiah here also perplexing, since Professor Van Seters and I did not discuss Jeremiah. I gather that my brief treatment of Jeremiah in Who Wrote the Bible? somehow irked Blenkinsopp, so he used this opportunity to bring it up. As it happens I repudiated that, view (that Jeremiah was one of several possible persons who might have produced the Deuteronomistic history) several years ago. I implore Professor Blenkinsopp to eschew this unkind tone. I am sorry that he begrudges me the popularity of Who Wrote the Bible?, but he would do better to respond to the evidence in it.

Likes ’Em Both

At the risk of making both John Van Seters and Richard Elliott Friedman cringe, I would like to say that, I use books by both of them in my “Ancient Israel and Judah” course. They are both engaging writers and my students and I have profited from their insights.

Correction

Answer Was All Wet

There was an error in your “Book of Numbers” column in the June 1994 issue (The Book of Numbers, BR 10:03). The waters of the Flood dried up in the 601st year after creation.

Honest Faith vs. Blind Belief