On The Myth Of Scriptural Literalism

[Tacenda]

1

It leaves us right where we were before. We will all continue to read the scripture with the same degree of literalness as we always have, Maklelan included. We all read and interpret in line with our own pov.

Yep

[Gray]

I thought this was relevant to this discussion:

 

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/emotional-intelligence-and-sola.html

 

 

 

I once quipped at a conference that a fundamentalist is a person who thinks he doesn't have a hermeneutic.

[jkwilliams]

My favorite discussion of fundamentalism from Terry Eagleton:

There are two things desirable for fighting fundamentalists. The first is not to be one yourself. The US government's war on the movement is somewhat compromised by the fact that it is run by scripture-spouting fanatics for whom the sanctity of human life ends at the moment of birth. This is rather like using the British National party to run ex-Nazis to earth, or hiring Henry Kissinger to investigate mass murder, as George Bush recently did by nominating him to inquire into the background to September 11. Fundamentalists of the Texan stripe are not best placed to hunt down the Taliban variety.

The second desirable thing is to know what fundamentalism is. The answer to this is less obvious than it might seem. Fundamentalism doesn't just mean people with fundamental beliefs, since that covers everyone. Being a person means being constituted by certain basic convictions, even if they are largely unconscious. What you are, in the end, is what you cannot walk away from. These convictions do not need to be burning or eye-catching or even true; they just have to go all the way down, like believing that Caracas is in Venezuela or that torturing babies is wrong. They are the kind of beliefs that choose us more than we choose them. Sceptics who doubt you can know anything for sure have at least one fundamental conviction. "Fundamental" doesn't necessarily mean "worth dying for". You may be passionately convinced that the quality of life in San Francisco is superior to that in Strabane, but reluctant to go to the gallows for it.

Fundamentalists are not always the type who seize you by the throat with one fist while thumping the table with the other. There are plenty of soft-spoken, self-effacing examples of the species. It isn't a question of style. Nor is the opposite of fundamentalism lukewarmness, or the tiresome liberal prejudice that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Tolerance and partisanship are not incompatible. Anti-fundamentalists are not people without passionate beliefs; they are people who number among their passionate beliefs the conviction that you have as much right to your opinion as they have. And for this, some of them are certainly prepared to die. The historian AJP Taylor was once asked at an interview for an Oxford fellowship whether it was true that he held extreme political beliefs, to which he replied that it was, but that he held them moderately. He may have been hinting that he was a secret sceptic, but he probably just meant that he did not agree with forcing his beliefs on others.

The word "fundamentalism" was first used in the early years of the last century by anti-liberal US Christians, who singled out seven supposed fundamentals of their faith. The word, then, is not one of those derogatory terms that only other people use about you, like "fatso". It began life as a proud self-description. The first of the seven fundamentals was a belief in the literal truth of the Bible; and this is probably the best definition of fundamentalism there is. It is basically a textual affair. Fundamentalists are those who believe that our linguistic currency is trustworthy only if it is backed by the gold standard of the Word of Words. They see God as copperfastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.

Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.

The New Testament author known as Luke is presumably aware that Jesus was actually born in Galilee. But he needs to have him born in Judea, since the Messiah is to spring from the Judea-based house of David. A Messiah born in bumpkinish Galilee would be like one born in Gary, Indiana. So Luke coolly invents a Roman census, for which there is no independent evidence, which requires everyone to return to their place of birth to be registered. Since Jesus's father Joseph comes from Bethlehem in Judea, he and his wife Mary obediently trudge off to the town, where Jesus is conveniently born.

It would be hard to think up a more ludicrous way of registering the population of the entire Roman empire than having them all return to their birthplaces. Why not just register them on the spot? The result of such a madcap scheme would have been total chaos. The traffic jams would have made Ken Livingstone's job look positively cushy. And we would almost certainly have heard about this international gridlocking from rather more disinterested witnesses than Luke. Yet fundamentalists must take Luke at his word.

Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death. Matthew's gospel, in a moment of carelessness, presents Jesus as riding into Jerusalem on both a colt and an *** - in which case, for the fundamentalist, the Son of God must indeed have had one leg thrown over each.

The fundamentalist is a more diseased version of the argument-from-the-floodgates type of conservative. Once you allow one motorist to throw up out of the car window without imposing a lengthy prison sentence, then before you know where you are, every motorist will be throwing up out of the window all the time, and the roads will become impassable. It is this kind of pathological anxiety, pressed to an extreme, which drove the religious police in Mecca early last year to send fleeing schoolgirls back into their burning school because they were not wearing their robes and head dresses, and which inspires family-loving US pro-lifers eager to incinerate Iraq to gun down doctors who terminate pregnancies. To read the world literally is a kind of insanity.

[mfbukowski]

I thought this was relevant to this discussion:

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/emotional-intelligence-and-sola.html

" Ionce quipped at a conference that a fundamentalist is a person who thinks he doesn't have a hermeneutic."

Well mine gets sore sometimes, but I always know I have one

[mfbukowski]

My favorite discussion of fundamentalism from Terry Eagleton:

Since you are not a postmodernist why do you post his stuff so much?

Honestly, could you just explain that to me?

Are you just showing us what those erroneous postmoderns believe?

[jkwilliams]

Since you are not a postmodernist why do you post his stuff so much?

Honestly, could you just explain that to me?

Are you just showing us what those erroneous postmoderns believe?

Eagleton is not a postmodernist, last I checked. In fact, he's been extremely critical of postmodernism, to wit, his rather pithy dismissal of postmodernism as allowing you to run a wagon train through everyone else's ideas without the inconvenience of putting forward any ideas of your own.

ETA: Eagleton's most well-known books "Literary Theory" and "After Theory" are critiques of postmodernism from a Catholic-Marxist perspective. And no, in case anyone is wondering, I'm not a Catholic or Marxist, either.

I know I shouldn't have responded, but I figured I couldn't let such a grievous misstatement stand, although I did have to chuckle at the thought of Eagleton being mistaken for the folks he opposes.

Edited October 29, 2015 by jkwilliams

[jkwilliams]

In case anyone doubts Eagleton's stance on postmodernism, there's this:

The Illusions of Postmodernism
 

From the back cover:

 

This brilliant critique explores the origins and emergence of postmodernism, revealing its ambivalences and contradictions. His primary concern is less with the more intricate formulations of postmodern philosophy than with the culture or milieu of postmodernism as a whole. Above all he speaks to a particular kind of student, or consumer, of popular "brands" of postmodern thought. 

 

Although Professor Eagleton's view of the topic is, as he says, generally a negative one, he points to postmodernism's strengths as well as its failings. He sets out not just to expose the illusions of postmodernism but to show the students he has in mind that they never believed what they thought they believed in the first place. In the process his gifts for irony and satire sharpen the reader's pleasure, and his commitment to the ethical and the vision of a just society, inspire engagement and "a refusal to acquiesce in the appalling mess which is the contemporary world".

[Bomgeography]

Some verses you can take literal others you cant

[mfbukowski]

What I have seen of comments on Eagleton

Say that he is a gadfly without much substance, but that is their opinion.

I find it very hard to find content, just slogans and complaints.

Oh well, I guess I just do not understand.

[Buckeye]

Eagleton is not a postmodernist, last I checked. In fact, he's been extremely critical of postmodernism, to wit, his rather pithy dismissal of postmodernism as allowing you to run a wagon train through everyone else's ideas without the inconvenience of putting forward any ideas of your own.

ETA: Eagleton's most well-known books "Literary Theory" and "After Theory" are critiques of postmodernism from a Catholic-Marxist perspective. And no, in case anyone is wondering, I'm not a Catholic or Marxist, either.

I know I shouldn't have responded, but I figured I couldn't let such a grievous misstatement stand, although I did have to chuckle at the thought of Eagleton being mistaken for the folks he opposes.

 

As an aside, if you want to cause a kerfuffle in the ward, I recommend mentioning in your next sacrament meeting talk that the current goodnight story you're reading to your kids is The Communist Manifesto.  

[mfbukowski]

Catholic Marxist?

Which side wins?

Never mind,thanks John

[jkwilliams]

As an aside, if you want to cause a kerfuffle in the ward, I recommend mentioning in your next sacrament meeting talk that the current goodnight story you're reading to your kids is The Communist Manifesto.  

 

When Eagleton gave his seminar at BYU, several professors noted that the Marxist angle was--shall we say--obscured when application was made for the seminar, lest the administration or board of trustees not allow it. 

 

While I subscribe neither to his Marxism or Catholicism, what I do appreciate about Eagleton is his emphasis on an ethical and just approach to life. For him, Marxism gives him a perspective from which to observe and improve the human condition, whereas his Catholicism gives him the moral imperative to do so.

Edited October 29, 2015 by jkwilliams

[Bomgeography]

I think you can take most versus literal

[jkwilliams]

What I have seen of comments on Eagleton

Say that he is a gadfly without much substance, but that is their opinion.

I find it very hard to find content, just slogans and complaints.

Oh well, I guess I just do not understand.

 

Any comments you've read that left you with the belief that Eagleton is a postmodernist are probably not worth reading.

 

In my discussion of postmodernism and Mormonism, I used Eagleton to critique postmodernism, oddly enough because I agree with him that it is a rather vacuous approach to how we live our life at best and a dangerous attempt to subvert all human meaning at worst. It is precisely its rejection of anything that can be said to be meaningful, good, or anything one way or another, that makes postmodernism a terrible philosophy for Mormons to adopt, which is why I wrote the series in the first place. A few misguided souls have latched onto a rather superficial understanding of postmodernism (its disdain for science) in an apparent attempt to boost the "cool" factor of Mormon apologetics, but, as I said repeatedly in my series, it's a very bad match for obvious reasons. A religion that espouses a plan of salvation is hardly compatible with a philosophy that undercuts and rejects plans of any kind.

 

Perhaps you can understand my absolute bewilderment that you responded to my posts by challenging me to defend postmodernism. When I quoted Eagleton about postmodernism's utter lack of a positive theory of life, language, and meaning, you dismissed it as a slogan, which made me wonder if you thought I was approving of postmodernism's emptiness. I hesitate to say this, but Eagleton's approach is pragmatic because it embraces the human. As he said in the article I quoted above, "roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work." For postmoderns, just as for fundamentalists, such roughness inexorably leads to a meaningless existence. Eagleton's entire project has been to reject the empty "hollow of a mark" of postmodernism for an approach that finds meaning in the work of being human.

 

I'm sure you'll have another comeback to this, but I hope I have been clear enough. If not, may I summarize?

 

1. Eagleton isn't a postmodernist.

2. I'm not a postmodernist. 

3. Postmodernism is a terrible fit with Mormonism.

[mfbukowski]

Whatever I say will just lengthen the conversation. I see no purpose in doing so. Have a nice day.

[jkwilliams]

Whatever I say will just lengthen the conversation. I see no purpose in doing so. Have a nice day.

 

You too. I just wanted to explain my position plainly and clearly once and for all. Now I can get back to the work of destroying the church, one testimony at a time.

[Analytics]

I recently posted a short essay on my blog in response to the claim made by numerous New Atheists (most notably Sam Harris) that fundamentalist religionists who read their scriptural texts literally are to be considered the more pious and genuine believers. This claim serves the argument that religion is fundamentally dangerous and harmful, since most scriptures seem to command genocide and racism, etc. The point of my essay is that there's actually no such thing as scriptural literalism. One of the concluding paragraphs:

 

 

I'm interested in your thoughts. 

 

You make some great points, and In terms of what actually happens, I agree with you.  Most Christians skim through Bible and pick out the packages they like, and completely ignore the ones they don't like.

 

But on the other hand, there are in fact any number of believers who not only claim to read the scriptures literally, but sincerely endeavor to do so.  Granted, sincerely believing that bronze-age mythology is the literal word of God as intended by God still leaves the believer with the inescapable obligation of figuring out what the Bible actually means, but that doesn't change the fact that he is approaching it as "the word of God" rather than "Bronze-age mythology."

 

I know I'll be hated for bringing up this example, but it does illustrate the point.  Ron Lafferty believed that Mormon Scriptures were literally true, and set out to understand and believe what they actually said.  He found that they taught that God literally talks to people, and occasionally God commands people to commit murder.  They further teach that when God commands you to murder somebody, the correct thing to do is obey.

 

I'm not saying that as a way to bash Mormons.  Mormons approach the scriptures the way Bob Crocket says: they believe the scriptures say what the Brethren tell them they say.  However, that doesn't change the fact that when somebody decides to dive into the scriptures and approach them as the literal word of God that God means to be taken literally, all bets are off regarding what they find and what they do with it.

[jkwilliams]

You make some great points, and In terms of what actually happens, I agree with you. Most Christians skim through Bible and pick out the packages they like, and completely ignore the ones they don't like.

But on the other hand, there are in fact any number of believers who not only claim to read the scriptures literally, but sincerely endeavor to do so. Granted, sincerely believing that bronze-age mythology is the literal word of God as intended by God still leaves the believer with the inescapable obligation of figuring out what the Bible actually means, but that doesn't change the fact that he is approaching it as "the word of God" rather than "Bronze-age mythology."

I know I'll be hated for bringing up this example, but it does illustrate the point. Ron Lafferty believed that Mormon Scriptures were literally true, and set out to understand and believe what they actually said. He found that they taught that God literally talks to people, and occasionally God commands people to commit murder. They further teach that when God commands you to murder somebody, the correct thing to do is obey.

I'm not saying that as a way to bash Mormons. Mormons approach the scriptures the way Bob Crocket says: they believe the scriptures say what the Brethren tell them they say. However, that doesn't change the fact that when somebody decides to dive into the scriptures and approach them as the literal word of God that God means to be taken literally, all bets are off regarding what they find and what they do with it.

I have known a few such people who wanted to know what the scriptures "really" mean. They all went off the proverbial deep end.

[mfbukowski]

Any comments you've read that left you with the belief that Eagleton is a postmodernist are probably not worth reading.

In my discussion of postmodernism and Mormonism, I used Eagleton to critique postmodernism, oddly enough because I agree with him that it is a rather vacuous approach to how we live our life at best and a dangerous attempt to subvert all human meaning at worst. It is precisely its rejection of anything that can be said to be meaningful, good, or anything one way or another, that makes postmodernism a terrible philosophy for Mormons to adopt, which is why I wrote the series in the first place. A few misguided souls have latched onto a rather superficial understanding of postmodernism (its disdain for science) in an apparent attempt to boost the "cool" factor of Mormon apologetics, but, as I said repeatedly in my series, it's a very bad match for obvious reasons. A religion that espouses a plan of salvation is hardly compatible with a philosophy that undercuts and rejects plans of any kind.

Perhaps you can understand my absolute bewilderment that you responded to my posts by challenging me to defend postmodernism. When I quoted Eagleton about postmodernism's utter lack of a positive theory of life, language, and meaning, you dismissed it as a slogan, which made me wonder if you thought I was approving of postmodernism's emptiness. I hesitate to say this, but Eagleton's approach is pragmatic because it embraces the human. As he said in the article I quoted above, "roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work." For postmoderns, just as for fundamentalists, such roughness inexorably leads to a meaningless existence. Eagleton's entire project has been to reject the empty "hollow of a mark" of postmodernism for an approach that finds meaning in the work of being human.

I'm sure you'll have another comeback to this, but I hope I have been clear enough. If not, may I summarize?

1. Eagleton isn't a postmodernist.

2. I'm not a postmodernist.

3. Postmodernism is a terrible fit with Mormonism.

Every post speaks for itself.

[jkwilliams]

I found that quote from Eagleton in its entirety, which is his summation of postmodernism and particularly poststructuralism:

 

 

 

One advantage of the dogma that we are the prisoners of our own discourse, unable to advance reasonably certain truth-claims because such claims are merely relative to our language, is that it allows you to drive a coach and horses through everybody else's beliefs while not saddling you with the inconvenience of having to adopt any yourself. It is, in effect, an invulnerable position, and the fact that it is also purely empty is simply the price one has to pay for this. The view that the most significant aspect of any piece of language is that it does not know what it is talking about smacks of a jaded resignation to the impossibility of truth which is by no means unrelated to post-1968 historical disillusion. But it also frees you at a stroke from having to assume a position on important issues, since what you say of such things will be no more than a passing product of the signifier and so in no sense to be taken as 'true' or 'serious'. A further benefit of this stance is that it is mischievously radical in respect of everyone else's opinions, able to unmask the most solemn declarations as mere dishevelled plays of signs, while utterly conservative in every other way. Since it commits you to affirming nothing, it is as injurious as blank ammunition. (Literary Theory, 2nd edition, p. 125.)

Edited October 30, 2015 by jkwilliams

[Jeanne]

Just a question..did anyone else besides me take certain passages of the D & C as well as the NT Book of Revelation super literal???  I mean, most of it scared the living hell right out of me.  I ask because it carries on to other readings like the Miracle of Forgiveness..Are so called modern prophecies included in as literal..how do people deal with this??  It makes one wonder why to believe..does that make sense?  In my experience and IMO..scriptual fear does not make one secure in retaining faith, healing or desire to progress.

[jkwilliams]

BTW, the entire text of Literary Theory: An Introduction is available online here:

 

https://mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/literary-theory_an-introduction_terry-eagleton.pdf

 

It's a pretty short read, and the writing is excellent. 

Edited October 30, 2015 by jkwilliams

[jkwilliams]

Interestingly enough, Eagleton writes that his book is essentially an "obituary" for literary theory. What he envisions to replace it is a "theory of discourse. ... What would be specific to the kind of study I have in mind, however, would be its concern for the kinds of effects which discourses produce, and how they produce them." This sounds quite similar to C.S. Peirce's pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." As far as language goes, however, Eagleton argues for a radically traditional approach:

 

Reading a zoology textbook to find out about giraffes is part of studying zoology, but reading it to see how its discourse is structured and organized, and examining what kind of effects these forms and devices produce in particular readers in actual situations, is a different kind of project. It is, in fact, probably the oldest form of 'literary criticism' in the world, known as rhetoric. Rhetoric, which was the received form of critical analysis all the way from ancient society to the eighteenth century, examined the way discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects. It was not worried about whether its objects of enquiry were speaking or writing, poetry or philosophy, fiction or historiography: its horizon was nothing less than the field of discursive practices in society as a whole, and its particular interest lay in grasping such practices as forms of power and performance. This is not to say that it ignored the truth-value of the discourses in question, since this could often be crucially relevant to the kinds of effect they produced in their readers and listeners. Rhetoric in its major phase was neither a 'humanism', concerned in some intuitive way with people's experience of language, nor a 'formalism', preoccupied simply with analysing linguistic devices. It looked at such devices in terms of concrete performance - they were means of pleading, persuading, inciting and so on - and at people's responses to discourse in terms of linguistic structures and the material situations in which they functioned. It saw speaking and writing not merely as textual objects, to be aesthetically contemplated or endlessly deconstructed, but as forms of activity inseparable from the wider social relations between writers and readers, orators and audiences, and as largely unintelligible outside the social purposes and conditions in which they were embedded. (p. 179)

[volgadon]

Catholic Marxist?

Which side wins?

Never mind,thanks John

Isn't liberation theology essentially that?

[jkwilliams]

Isn't liberation theology essentially that?

 

Pretty much. There have been a lot of Marxist Catholics in Latin America, for example.