From: hedrick@cs.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Limits to Criticism: response
Date: 5 Sep 92 22:34:58 GMT

RexLex has asked for comments on his series of postings on Limits to
Criticism.  I would think my views on most of these issues would
already be clear, but I'm going to try once again.  I should not that
he has started yet another series of postings from a book on this
subject, by Van Til.  I'm holding this off until I see some evidence
that someone other than me is reading his postings.  The lack of
reaction to the first set of postings suggests to me that our readers
may not be interested in dealign with 100K books.

-----------------------------------------------

Limits to Criticism/1.  It's hard to object to this, until we see what is
meant in the later sections

Limits to Criticism/2 through 4.

  I think some points about the liberal view are overdrawn here.
Perhaps there are some writers who say what you indicate, but those
that I read do believe that God inspired the development of
monotheism, and in general the growth of the religion of Israel.
Alongside the growth of criticism in the liberal church, there was
also something called the Biblical theology movement, which attempted
to build a theology grounded on the Bible as understood by critical
scholarship.  You seem to have seen mostly Bultmann and friends -- who
seem largely to see the Bible as a mythologized form of
existentialism.  But what was more influential in the Church were
people like Von Rad, and people who used the results of analyses like
his as a tool to purge theology of an overly speculative tendency,
where categories seemed more based on neo-platonic thought that the
Bible.  An example of this is "Agape and Eros", by Nygren.

  The folks who participated in this movement, and indeed most of
those who function within churches such as the Presbyterian Church, do
not treat the patriarchal period as entirely mythological.  Certainly
a statement such as the following does not represent the result of
mainstream scholarship such as you will find in liberal seminaries.

  Consequently, the whole history of the patriarchs
  and of Israel was declared mythical and legendary.  

In fact archaeologists assure us that much of the background of the
stories of the patriarchs seems realistic.  I believe it's generally
understood that historical material has been preserved in these
stories.  And of course as we get to the history of Israel, the text
begins to refer to written sources.  This is far from mythology.
However there is a claim that in the earlier periods there has been
some legendary accretion, and even in later histories I do not expect
perfect accuracy.  This is far from saying that I think it's
mythology.  I certainly do not believe that Moses is mythological, and
I accept that he was a law-maker.  When I deny that Moses wrote the
first five books, I'm not denying that he was responsible for many of
the laws (though I would be sceptical that he was responsible for all
of them).  Rather, the claim is that the final editing of them, and
the historical narrative that is associated with them, was done by
others.  You seem to have this view that when I deny inerrancy, I'm
saying that everything is a myth.  That's just not the case.

  As I've said before, I'm sceptical about reconstructions of sources.
This doesn't mean I doubt that there were sources.  But I don't see
why that would surprise or alarm anyone.  I accept the idea that there
material was passed on by people with differing views, and that
sometimes we can see signs of that in the text.  I just don't buy some
of the more complex and detailed theories.  Not that I doubt that
something like that might have happened, but I'm not convinced we can
reconstruct it.

  I'm mystified by the comments about treating the Bible as an
ordinary book.  It is ordinary in that it was written by normal people
on normal paper, and passed on the same way as other documents.
What's extraordinary about it is the contents: that it describes God's
relationship with Israel and the early Church.  I think you're
confusing the book with its contents.

  Specifically, I do not deny that we are fallen, nor would I say that
we are evolving towards good without God.  Rather, I see the Bible as
an account of how God worked with Israel and later with the Church.

  I will say however that I regard the story of the fall itself as a
myth.  That it nevertheless correctly describes the human condition
seems clear from its use by Jesus and Paul.  In general I regard
roughly the first 11 chapters of Gen. as almost totally mythological.
Furthermore, I maintain that the editors knew it was mythological, and
that it was perfectly reasonable for them to include myths in the
Bible.  Our myths tell a lot about what we believe.  It's perfectly
possible for people to understand the human condition in terms of a
myth, even while knowing it is a myth.  The OT seems to be an attempt
to let us understand what was going on with Israel on every possible
level.  This we have everything from their history to their love
poetry.  In this context it seems quite appropriate to include their
creation myths.

  Many of the views you are criticizing are not held now by scholars
in liberal churches.  For example, the tendency to explain away
miracles is now regarded as absurd.  That the red sea parted because
of a wind, that manna was the sap of plants, that Jesus' miracle of
multiplying bread and fishes was simply the crowd reacting generously
and contributing their own hoarded supplies, these explanations are
typically referred to as "the older liberalism" in commentaries and
have a sort of antique flavor to them.  However it's possible to
believe that Jesus had the power of God, but also to realize that
there's a tendency of stories to grow in the telling.  That is, I
recognize that some stories may be legendary, or have suffered
legendary expansion, even while I also claim that there's no way to
understand what Jesus preached, how people reacted to him, or why he
was killed without realizing that he did miracles.

  The most significant issue seems to be the one of in what sense the
Bible is the Word of God.  This is complicated because of its varied
nature.  I do believe there are parts of the Bible that are in a
fairly direct way God's word.  This would include the prophets' "Thus
says the Lord", and Jesus' teachings.  However I would place some
limits on this.  You quote William Temple as saying

  It is even of greater importance that there is no single deed or
  saying of His of which we can be perfectly sure that He said or did 
  precisely this or that.

I sort of agree with that, but I'm not sure I mean the same thing he
does.  That is, I think it's clear that the Gospel writers paraphrased
and reorganized material.  Thus there are few places where I'm certain
we have his *exact* words.  However I do believe they understood his
message and endeavored to present it accurately.  So while I'm not
sure we have his exact words, I do believe we have what he taught.
There are actually some cases where I believe we have exact words,
e.g.  a couple of places where they are reported in the original, such
as "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" and "talitha cumi".  But these are
quite exceptional.  I would assume that the words of institution and
the Lord's prayer have also been preserved fairly closely, but even in
the words of institution we see some variations in wording between 
sources.  Because I believe we have substantially what Jesus taught,
and what the prophets spoke, I can't agree with the idea that there is
no such thing as revealed truth.  Christianity is, after all,
considered to be a revealed religion.  To me the whole point of the
Bible is to show us God revealing it.  Where I disagree with you is
that I think this revelation was done through flawed, human
instruments.  But I do still believe we have revealed truth.

  In effect I apply at the level of higher criticism the same kind of
ideas that conservatives normally apply to textual criticism.  Most
people agree that the text of the Bible has suffered in transmission.
However the claim is that the number and nature of errors is such that
it has no substantial effect on the usefulness of the document.  I
claim the same thing at the level of higher criticism.  I believe that
there are errors in the original, but that the number and nature of
them is such that they have no substantial effect on the usefulness of
the document.  But this assumes that we use some discernment in
reading it, so that we separate poetry from prose, history from
parable, etc.

  I do not entirely agree with the idea that the Bible becomes the
Word of God only when God addresses an individual through it.  I see
some point to the statement.  It's based on an idea of the Reformers.
They placed great emphasis on the power of the Word preached.  Until
the Holy Spirit speaks through it to human hearts, it is in some sense
dead, in that it has no impact on us.  Furthermore, as I've said in a
couple of recent postings, I think we do need to separate appreciation
of what was meant in the original context with seeing how it applies
to us.  Yet if we aren't careful, it's easy to give the impression
that the Bible has no unique status.  God can speak to us through any
book.  Thus one might argue that anything could become the Word of God
as much as the Bible.  This seems inadequate.  The Bible has a unique
role, because it is our only source for the revelations that are the
basis of the Christian understanding of God: the history of Israel,
the revelation to its prophets, Jesus' teachings, and the accounts of
Paul, Peter, etc.

  In your third posting, you seem to have identified two views:

  - that the Bible becomes the Word of God only when a believer discovers it
  - that the Bible contains the Word of God rather than that it is the
	Word of God

I would say that I accept the second, but not the first.  I guess.  A
lot of it is a matter of how you use words.  The problem is that there
the mode of revelation is different in different books.  In the case
of a prophet who wrote something directly revealed by God, I would say
that that book is the word of God.  (I reserve Word of God for
Christ.)  In the historical books, the revelation is more indirect.
We see God's hand operating in the history of Israel.  But I see the
revelation as being what God did in history, and the Biblical books as
being a report written by a human being describing that.  The
distinction can often be of minimal significance.  E.g. if Jesus
preached something, and what we have is an accurate record of what he
preached, it's not unreasonable to think of what we have a revelation.
But in principle I'd still make the distinction.  To me if you call
Luke a revealed document, this would mean that God revealed the
contents to Luke himself, i.e.  that he did not depend upon witnessed
of the events, but God told him directly what happened.  This would of
course contradict Luke's own description in the prolog, which claims
that his book is the result of a careful sifting of information given
to him by others, not a direct revelation.  So in that sense I'd say
it contains revelation, rather than that it is a revelation.  But
to the extent that we think it's accurate, for practical purposes
there's not much distinction.

  Aside from this kind of issue, we also have to look at the mode in
which revelation occured.  Is it directly "Thus says the Lord"?  Is it
through seeing the actions of God in history?  Or is it something like
the Psalms or wisdom literature?  In order to properly use the Bible,
we have to identify in any given case the mode in what God's
revelation occured and how it is being reported.  If we confuse the
mode of revelation in Judges with that in Isaiah, we could end up with
disasterous results, since many of the events reported in Judges are
not anything we'd want a Christian to emulate.  Because of this need
to consider carefully how God's revelation is shown in each book, I
think a statement like "the Bible contains God's Word" makes sense.
It acts as a caution that we have to be careful about how to apply it.
If this phrase is seen as a code word for something more radical, I
might not agree.

  I should note that I do not agree with Bultmann's program of
demythologizing.  I take most of the critical events of the Bible as
sober history: the exodus, the giving of the Law, revelations to the
prophets, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.  I would hope that
this is true of clergy in our church.  I would certainly be upset to
find that when they speak of Jesus' resurrection, they're speaking of
a myth.  However I do believe there are places in the Bible that are
myths, or perhaps better, parables.  To me this is not an issue of
"demythologizing", but simply of understanding the literary genre.
E.g. I think Jonah is clearly intended as a work of fiction, as are
Christ's parables.  As I mentioned above, I believe that the very
early parts of Genesis are mythological as well.  It's my impression
that Bultmann's program of demythologizing was never widely accepted,
and is not influential now, at least not in my church.  Perhaps I'm
being naive.  I think the Presbyterian Church (USA) is among the most
conservative of the churches that reject inerrancy.  One of the
reasons I left the Methodist Church is that I had this feeling that
many of the clergy thought things were symbolic that I thought were
literally true.  But that was in the 60's.  Things may well be
different now.

  I am not able to comment authoritatively on the critique of "Honest
to God".  It's been too long since I read it.  Other things I've read
by Robinson do not suggest the kind of radical rejection of historical
Christianity that you imply.  My impression of Honest to God at the
time was that he was opposing not historical Christianity but
misunderstandings that had grown up in the popular view of
Christianity.  You need to look very closely at his comments about
Jesus to see what he was opposing.  He was concerned about a tendency
to take Christian claims in a docetic sense.  I think he intended to
be advocating a modern version of orthodox Christology against this
docetic tendency.  Note that what he's opposing is the idea of God who
simply takes the form of a man but not the reality of man, a God who
is simply dressed up as man.  This is *not* what orthodox Christology
is saying.  This is the docetic view he's opposing.  You can see his
Christology in more detail in "The Human Face of God".  If I read him
correctly, his views are modelled after Theodore of Mopsuestia, who
was regarded as orthodox at the time of the early discussions of
Christology.  (He was ruled heretical after his death, but all the
accounts I've seen say that the issue was church politics, not
theology.)  To the extent that he is rejecting orthodox theology, I do
not accept him, but I think his intent is more orthodox than you give
him credit for.

  While I don't agree with the "God is dead" theology, the
presentation of it here does not seem to be based on having actually
read it.  Unfortunately I read the book by Altizer and Hamilton when I
was still in high school, which is a *long* time ago.  But as I recall
it, their view was based on a radical understanding of the
incarnation.  When they said God was dead, they meant that God as a
separate, transcendant being no longer existed, because he had
incarnated himself in Christ and was now totally present in the world.
Now I think this is crazy theology, but it has more Christian roots
than was implied in your discussion.

  You talk about exploding the myth of "God in the sky".  To the
extent that this is what people think God is, it *is* a myth and it
should be exploded.  This is largely what Robinson was trying to do.

  It looks like the book you're excerpting was written during the "God
is dead movement".  I can see how a writer might have believed in 1969
that Bultmann had triumphed in the liberal church, and that things
were quickly going even further.  Fortunately this has turned out not
to be the case.  At least in the Presbyterian Church, I see little if
any influence of Bultmann or "God is dead" among the clergy.  I'm
speaking of theology.  Some of Bultmann's contributions to Biblical
criticism are still quoted, though I doubt that Presbyterian scholars
would take quite the wholesale negative view that he does.  As a
regular commissioner to the Presbytery of New Brunswick, I hear
confessions of faith from a lot of people who are joining the faculty
in Princeton Seminary.  They are far closer to traditional orthodoxy
than you might think.  Shortly after your book was written things
began moving in a more conservative direction in the "mainline"
churches.  Of course we still have a range of views, but I think my
view is fairly typical of clergy.  And it is very far from Bultmann.

On your conclusion:

  I don't see the big problem with sources that you do.  The first
five books don't claim to have been written by Moses.  They do claim
to include major contributions by him.  I accept the latter.  I am not
competent to talk about the dating of individual pieces.

  About Daniel, I accept the common view that apocalyptic was a
literary form where using the name of a past character was part of the
form, and would fool no one.  II Tim and II Peter seem rather
different.  I agree with you that if they are not from Paul and Peter,
there seems to be an intention to deceive.  Thus I would regard
pseudonymity as removing their authority.  I would say that I'm not as
confident of the arguments against them as some.  However the
acceptance of these arguments by people who seem to know what they are
doing is so universal (people who know the field have claimed that
even evangelical scholars privately admit they think the Pastorals are
probably not by Paul) that I glad that no major Christian ideas depend
solely on the Pastorals or II Peter.