Keep up the good work!

http://www.truthsetsfree.net
http://www.gaybiblechristians.org

I think the reason that many of you atheists are disclaiming what she say is because you’re afraid that what she’s saying might actually be true.

First off, thanks to Candace for joining in. I’m getting a much better idea of where you’re coming from (a slightly different place than me, but that’s cool).

Secondly, I’m pleased that we’re off the topic of Biblical interpretation and on to application. For liberals like myself, Candace and Mike, there’s a deep sense in which, as Darryl correctly pointed out, Biblical interpretation is actually superfluous.

Take any Biblical story that you like, say, David slaying Goliath. Did it really happen as described? Did the story change over the years? Is it purely mythological? These are interesting questions, but for me living in today’s world, why does it matter? A book that is only a collection of random semi-historical factoids is next to useless.

What Candace is describing, instead, is what’s known as “narrative theology”. Given that Mike describes himself as “emerging church”, it’s likely that he has a very similar position (he can expand on this if he cares to). As Candace said:

What makes the Bible continue to be relevant, to me at least, is that it is a chronicle of a people’s journey with God. It is a book of stories that reflects not just the nature of God, but the nature of humans as they struggle to deal with their meaning here in this life.

The narrative theology view, in a nutshell, is that there is such a thing as “the divine” that people have real experiences of. The Bible, as well as the sacred texts of the other major religions, are works written by people who have had this experience as a way of understanding them. As a result, sacred texts, including the Bible, tend to be coloured by the time and place where they were written.

The understanding of “the divine” in the Bible has changed over the course of it being written. The early Hebrew texts are very different from the later post-exile ones. The Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical texts are different again, the life and teachings of Jesus are different again, and the writings of Paul of Tarsus, as he incorporates Greek philosophy, is different again.

This is why I get a bit exasperated when people, usually conservative or fundamentalist Christians, bring up the idea of “traditional Christianity”. There is no such thing. There are so many traditions, so many understandings, so many beliefs that there is no one authentic form of Christianity that everything else is a deviation from.

It doesn’t even stay static for the duration of the New Testament.

I can already hear the usual atheist objections to this mounting, so let me make something clear: This is only a problem if you’re a fundamentalist. If you don’t believe that everyone in the world must believe as you do, then there is nothing bad about changing your position as often as circumstances change. In fact, this is a strength, not a weakness.

Remember, too, that Christianity was really the first religion in history that was not designed to be tied to a single nation or ethnic group. It was not designed to be a “state religion”, or in any way “in charge”. This is important to keep in mind when thinking about what constitutes “Christian tradition”.

And what about non-Christian sacred texts? Most liberal Christians are of the opinion that they are also valuable, but if you haven’t been brought up in the culture, they can be hard to understand, so each to their own on that point.

Brian E asked a hypothetical question, which I found really interesting to think about:

If the concept of sexual orientation existed at the time Leviticus was written, do you really think Leviticus would’ve read like this [...]

The short answer is: I have no idea, and we don’t have enough evidence to make a determination.

Whatever Moloch worshippers were doing, Leviticus would still probably have prohibited it. Leviticus is like that.

There are some things that would have been different, had circumstances been different, of course. For example, if refrigeration had existed at the time of Leviticus, I think it’s likely that there wouldn’t have been prohibitions on pork and shellfish, though there might have been religious laws on how to use refrigeration properly. (I thought that Katie made this point very well, BTW.)

Paul is a different matter. If sexual orientation had been well-understood in Greek culture, what he said might have been quite different, or he might not have mentioned it at all. Exactly what he would have said would just be speculation, and probably would have depended on the specifics of what Greek philosophers had written on the topic.

One other point on Biblical interpretation I’d like to make clear before I leave this topic alone: Nobody is claiming that anything in the Bible is in favour of loving same-sex relationships. As Candace correctly pointed out, it’s neither pro nor anti slavery. And, of course, it says nothing one way or the other on stem cell research.

Since the Bible is silent, Christians must decide these issues on other grounds.

One final thing that Candace brought up:

[...] the church has long, long been the taillight when it comes to social progression. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, interracial marriage, women’s rights – now gay rights – the church has been on the wrong side of history every single time. I think that’s really quite obvious.

It’s not obvious to anyone outside the US. Taking slavery as the example, the first country to formally outlaw slavery was actually Hungary, under its first Christian king.

In Britain, which is what I’m most familiar with (since slavery was abolished in my country, Australia, when it was abolished in Britain; not that Australia had a huge history of slavery) churches were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement. It was mostly Nonconformists and the Clapham Sect at first, but spread to most of Anglicanism very quickly.

This just underlines my point: There is no one thing called “the Christian tradition”. Any argument that assumes that such a thing exists is wrong.

Mike, from my understanding, Candace’s liberal theology is not the same as the emergent theology that we have heard from you. I don’t think she’s driven to make all the pieces fit.

Darryl, you’re probably one of the few that have bothered to make the distinction.

Though to be honest, I’m content to not have all the pieces fit either. I gave up the need to have everything make perfect sense a long time ago when I realized that human cognition and life in general just don’t work that way.

To be fair, I would say that many people in this discussion are making assumptions about atheism and atheists without stating them explicitly as well, and this has the same result of people talking past each other. Is an atheist simply someone whose beliefs happen not to include a belief in God, or a god? Or is an atheist someone who specifically believes that no God or god exists? Do atheists consider religion a matter of personal preference? Or is it a harmless form or mistaken thinking? Or is it an evil force that, morally speaking, must be opposed? When I say something about atheists or atheism, I need to be clear what I mean by those terms.

Maybe, instead of having a discussion about whose beliefs are right and whose are wrong, it would be more enlightening to have a discussion in which each of us shares what we believe and why.

Statements like hers confirm my belief that some folks enjoy the “stories” and the trappings of religion so much that they choose not to take the small step from a religion that entails “an evolution of how we understand God” to a recognition that such a religion entails an evolution of how it imagines God. When I became fed up with the harm that religion does, my cost-benefit analysis compelled me to take the step.