Hi Lux – welcome to IO
I'm a former disbeliever...
It's funny that you should post this time of year. The salmon are swimming upstream now, and I reckon, if you persevere, your journey will have a lot in common with theirs. You're swimming against the tide of culture, fashion and opinion, so be prepared for a battering, but keep going.
I've realized my problem was not really with God, but with religionists.
I have a reputation here for being a bit of Jack Russell terrier when I get my teeth into religionists. I think I'm a bit too Gaelic for most people's comfort. But then, they do so much damage! And not only the conservative 'every word is the absolute God's honest truth' extremists, there is their counterpoint, the liberal extreme, that explains God in terms of an interior dialogue with oneself. This view tends to be more acceptable, but really, when it comes to reason and objectivity, it's just as bad.
I realized my knowledge of religions was superficial therefore judged them unfairly. Now I'm beginning to open my mind to the idea of God and desire to learn about it.
Well that's the road to enlightenment.
But I grapple with what I should believe.
Love that struggle! As soon as you 'settle', you've stopped moving. That's the way it seems to me, anyway. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking the wire ...
There is a saying: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," it's a misquotation from a poem by Alexander Pope:
"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again."
(
An Essay on Criticism, 1709. The Pierian spring refers to the home of the nine muses, the Greek goddesses who inspire literature, science and the arts.)
In 1601 Francis Bacon said:
"A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion."
(
The Essays: Of Atheism)
Mind you, centuries before both of them, St. John Chrysostom said:
"A little learning is a dangerous thing, because it makes those who have it unwilling to learn more. The unlearned are more open to conviction, because they are not so foolish as to think that they are wise."
I don't wish to offend the people of Abrahamic religions, but I'll tell you frankly that I do not, can not believe many things that are said ...
OK. But pause for a moment, and keep that open mind. Remember that Jews find those many things as troubling as you do. They're not all into dashing out the brains of their enemy's children. Yet they find their way through ... usually be recourse to informed, insightful and inspired commentary.
If the Bible is anything, it's a spiritually-inspired book, and should be read according to the spirit, not the letter, as its critics tend to do.
And don't loose sight of the 'big picture', the Bible is not one book, it's a collection of books written over thousands of years. There's more to it than history, mythological or otherwise.
... Please tell me God didn't say these.
No, He didn't.
My perception of the old testament, at this point, is that it's a compilation of legendary stories embellished by ancient mostly unidentified authors.
I tend to see it as a journey, from the old tribal ways into a new understanding of God. From polytheism, animism to a philosophically profound monotheism. (The Greeks were gobsmacked when they read Moses, and insisted he must have read Plato!)
There are many who assume that because some of it is myth, all of it is. This tends to be asserted by religionists at the liberal end of the spectrum. It fails to discern between the different genres of text in the Book. It was popular towards the end of the last century, but is out of date now.
I accept some historical events may be true. I'm open to the idea that some prophets have received God's wisdom. I see the scriptures as true, divinely inspired theology mixed with foreign elements that are purely the work of men. As such, we need to separate the kernel of the inspired divine messages from the husk that contains it.
That's how I read it. That's how Catholicism reads it. It seems reasonable and rational to me. It's the 'Middle Way'.
But we are flanked by a vociferous chorus, and the more extreme, the more insistent and assertive –
On my right, the conservative, for whom every word is literally true. Creationists. Hellfire and brimstone preachers. Bible-thumpers ...
On my left, the liberal, for whom none of it is true, all of it taken with a pinch of salt, indeed most of it is written off as fabrication.
My knowledge of Judeo-Christianity is fairy elementary. I'd appreciate it if someone could educate me as to what to make of these parts of the old testament.
Huge question.
One of the first things to see is that the OT is not just a collection of books, it's a collection of genres, and the rules of criticism change according to genre. We don't judge poetry by the same rules we judge history, for example.
... I already know how disbelievers see the bible - just as I did before - "Fictional stories all fabricated by humans." - Now I'm willing to explore deeper than that.
Now you'll find the horizon, not set at a fixed distance by human credulity, opens up to all manner of possibility.
The Bigger Picture:
History:
More than half the content of the book. The most common claim is that the Bible is unhistorical. What people mean is that those writing thousands of years ago do not write according to the same 'rules' as we write history today. Therefore it's not history, and therefore we are safe to assume it's all made up. Wrong. Not safe at all. This is where scholars step away and say 'You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment' (a quote from the original UK '
House of Cards'), in short, good scholarship shies away from sweeping generalisations such as that. Too often what we're told couldn't be, turns up in archaeological evidence.
It's a subjective narrative, not a forensic one, but that does not necessarily mean it's not true. Doesn't mean it's all true, either ... simply that there is truth mixed in there somewhere.
But the Bible is also:
Law codes: Lists of instructions, precepts, etc. Eg Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Collections of Wisdom: Prof. Huston Smith said 'the sacred texts of the world 'are the winnowed wisdom of the human race' – so we have Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The Book of Job is an extended contemplation on the nature of suffering.
Prayer and Poetry: Psalms, Song of Solomon, Lamentations.
Prophecy: The usual suspects!
Apocalyptica: Daniel, etc.
You have to read each in its own context. I've not broached the New Testament, which introduces new genres.
The way I read it:
Take Abram's readiness to sacrifice his own son, Isaac.
I read it as Abram drawn away from the 'old gods'. He's at odds so much with the ways of the gods that he ups sticks and sets off for pastures new. Human sacrifice was all part of the 'old ways' and, God bless him, as much as he's looking for something else, he's inculcated in the old ways. Old habits. The whole Abram Isaac thing is not a 'test' by God – I believe God to be more intelligent and insightful than that – nor does God say sacrifice your son to me one minute, then changes His mind the next ...
But supposing Abram grew up in a world where human sacrifice is the done thing. And supposing he's coming to the idea that maybe God doesn't insist on human sacrifice?
I don't read Abram, or Abraham as he was later known, as having a fully-realised understanding of the God of the Jews. The God that we read into the Bible. He's feeling his way forward in the darkness, towards a different sort of covenant between gods and peoples. It took thousands of years for the Jews to work it out. Moses was not a fait accompli, but the result of a long process, a lot of mistakes, a lot of backsliding ... but a sure belief, not in man, but in God, as not some fickle and capricious creature as the gods of the ancient world tended to be.
So they tended to view good things happening as a reward from God, and bad things happening as a punishment. As I said, old habits die hard. And don't we do that today? Don't we sometimes say, when the doodoo hits the fan, "This was bound to happen. I should have known better"? Same thing.
Read what Noah did after the flood subsided. Read what happens in the Epic of Gilgamesh after the flood subsided. Compare the two. the Epic is barbaric. Noah is, by comparison, positively enlightened! Yes, they're myths, but they are myths that encompass an outlook, and the difference between the two outlooks, its 'same world, different planet'.
A note on the presentation of God as 'jealous', 'wrathful', etc. many religionists reject this notion, based on the most superficial understandings.
I'm told, for example, that most of us believe in God as a white-bearded old man sitting on a throne up in the clouds.
I don't bother taxing such people with how symbolically apposite that image is. Symbolism is my favourite language, but no-one here understands it today in any real depth, nor would they consider it if I explained it, so I tend to keep my theology to myself – it's a bit too 'out there' for most Catholics!
Nor does it cross their mind that it might well be what the Buddhists call an
upaya – a Sanskrit term meaning 'expedient means' or 'teaching' along the paths to liberation. Instead the critic clings on to it in the negative sense and actually prevent the process of their own illumination!
Lastly, of course, it never occurs to them that their own intellectual abstractions about the nature of the Divine are usually no less naive, albeit couched in sophisticated language.
There are, and have been for centuries, luminous commentaries on how we should read and understand the Divine Names, and how we should understand the qualities predicated of God.
The Bible talks of God's right hand, or foot, or eye, but the Traditions insist that God is not a man, nor made in man's image. Therefore we have to understand how to read the language of the Bible ... and not assume that because we can read, we understand what we read.
(Again, one idea is that because we are 'modern' we see through the silliness and ignorance of the 'ancients', that we have 'progressed' since their times, and we should 'de-construct' their writings to get to that which even they didn't realise they were writing about ... the opposite and equally fallacious notion is that we are so far removed, we cannot possibly hope to know what they were trying to say – and yet those who declare this do not desists from saying with total certainty what they definitely did not mean ... )
Lastly – and this is 'my theology', I read the Bible holistically, I see it as the union of soul and body, not a textbook for the soul embodied in a physical environment. The Abrahamic Tradition is an holistic one, not a dualist one.
When he was at Oxford, C.S. Lewis used to argue that the New Testament is largely a mythology. Wonderful and inspiring, but mythology. And then one day some of his friends, J.R.R. Tolkein among them, said, "But what if its not? What if it happened actually?" That question 'opened his mind' to the possibility of God being something more than an extension of our own utopian ideals.
By which I mean, for example, that I appreciate the 'spiritual sense' of Scripture, but do not discount therefore the 'literal sense'.
The right says "No, it's literal all the way!" and the left says, "Really? How silly. It's obviously metaphorical!"
I don't see it as either/or, I see it as both in one. A larger and all inclusive
natura, as my favourite heretic teaches
(Johannes Scottus Eriugena, a 9th century monk.)
Take the miracles recorded in the NT. If God is God, as the Bible would have us believe in God, why can He only act 'analogically' or 'metaphorically'? Why cannot He realise His will actually? If He's God, what's stopping Him?
(Bear in mind that in the New Testament, the scribe is quite clear on when he's telling us a parable, and when it's an actuality.)
So I read and I wonder:
What if Abram
was about to sacrifice his son as was the custom of his day, and then he had a breakthrough, as we like to say in modern psychological terms. A flash of inspiration. A realisation. A revelation. Is that so improbable? Is it impossible? And when his followers asked him why he didn't go through with it, he said something like, "I had the knife, I was just about to do it, and then it was as if I heard the voice of the Lord, and I looked up ... "
So it end up in the Bible as God talking to Abram. But then, He did, didn't He? Abram held his hand.
What if Christ
can heal the sight of the man born blind? Not analogically or metaphorically (the actual text makes no sense if it's a metaphor, as the blind man is no more knowledgeable after the even than before it) ...
... but if Jesus can do these things metaphorically, why not
actually as well?
People might say, 'He doesn't need to, the metaphor is the point', but it's not. Not at all. Because that renders the two worlds, spirit and body, God and man, as separate and distinct. It all happens 'there', nothing changes 'here'.
The ancient wisdom says 'as above, so below', not 'as above, so below, metaphorically speaking'.
If Jesus can bring about not merely a moment of inspiration, or a psychological insight, but actual physical change, then He is so much more than the liberal wing of Christianity supposes Him to be, and there's more to this world than they can imagine or will allow ...
