The Freedom of Christianity and the Bondage of Materialism

My gratitude to G.K. Chesterton for this point.

"Free-thinking" atheism or naturalism is really nothing of the sort. By affirming naturalism/materialism (which claims that the physical is all there is) one must by definition reject many claims which a supernaturalist would be able to evaluate evidentially. Just as a determinist must reject even a single event which falls outside of strict causal laws but an indeterminist can accept any number of determined events, so a materialist must reject even a single supernatural occurrence out of hand. The supernaturalist, at the same time, can reject any number of supernatural claims, but retains the freedom to accept those which he or she has good reason to think true.

As such, there is really more intellectual freedom in supernaturalist Christianity than in atheistic materialism. For example, suppose there is a set of propositions S which consists of claims of miracles or supernatural events. Suppose there is also a set of propositions N which consists of claims of material or natural events. The materialist must evaluate set N on the basis of facts, likelihood, etc. and, perhaps, assent to propositions N1, N2, and N4 but reject N3 as having insufficient basis for belief. The materialist must, by definition reject all propositions in set S without consideration. He or she is constrained by their philosophy.

The supernaturalist must evaluate set N in the same way as the materialist, and will, say accept the same propositions N1, N2, and N4 but reject N3. But rather than uncritically reject the propositions S1...S4, he or she is free to evaluate them on the basis of evidence and accept those which seem credible. For example, to accept S1 and reject the rest.

Progress and improvement in theology are never to be expected from obsequious obedience to the spirit of the age; they can stem only from increased determination to pursue the law of theological knowledge itself, even when theologies are maintaining a cheerful openness toward the spirit of the times.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

The Documentary Hypothesis and Biblical Inerrancy

The idea of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch is a somewhat heated point of contention between conservative, usually evangelical, Christians and more liberal academics, some of whom do not adhere to the faith they study. As such, the debate is usually characterized as educated scholars and experts versus lay Church members and naïve pastors. As with all religious and doctrinal contentions, the issue is more complicated than it may first appear. While the idea of multiple authorship of separate “strands” within the first five books of the Old Testament began to go out of vogue among biblical scholars in around the 1970s (in favor of a more complex vision of redaction, editing, and gradual development), the most famous iteration of source criticism remains the Documentary Hypothesis associated with Julius Wellhausen. In it, Wellhausen (among several others) attempts to identify the voices of the separate authors of the Pentateuch, and to speculate on their reasons for writing, worldview, and time of composition. But what are the difficulties this presents for conservative views of biblical inerrancy, and why does it matter so much to so many people?

It is, admittedly, almost impossible to make a strong case for biblical inerrancy without assuming divine revelation. Without the doctrine of God’s superintendence of the writing, composition, and compilation of the Bible, passages such as Genesis 1-11 must become virtually entirely fictional or legendary. Even assuming the traditional account of the Pentateuch’s composition by Moses, hundreds to thousands of years pass between “Let there be light” and “Let My people go.” Without God’s revelation to Moses (or any author) there would seem to be no way to know what happened in the world’s infancy. A tantalizing hint of an antediluvian scroll or record is given in Genesis 5:1, “the scroll of the generations of Adam,” which, given new discoveries of writing appearing as early as 3400 BCE among the Sumerians (Kaiser 58), may mean that the author of Genesis compiled the book from other written material. This is, however, not conclusive.

But for evangelical Christians who hold to the doctrine of plenary inspiration and inerrancy, the revelation of Holy Scripture is a presupposition already made, and thus justification of accounts in the early chapters of Genesis is quite simple. God was there, and He narrated it to Moses. This is, of course, an easy solution, but one cannot justify the inerrancy of the Bible by saying that God wrote it, and that we know God wrote it because the Bible is inerrant. This is obvious, though pious, circular reasoning.

The true basis for the inerrancy of scripture rests in faith. Unless one assumes the absolute truth of the Bible, one cannot trust it completely, and if one cannot trust it completely, one cannot trust its account of the perfect life, propitiatory death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the Bible is not completely errorless, then there are (necessarily) errors in some of it. If there are errors in some of it, for example, the numerous claims of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, then there is no way to know that the account of the resurrection of Jesus is not also in error. It is an all or nothing game. The basis of all Christian belief is called into question the moment the Bible descends from Logos to literature. Admittedly, the claims of God’s work in the lives of believers would remain were the Bible to fall, but the knowledge of the nature and demands of that God would be gone.

It is because one must trust the Bible completely that evangelical Christians resist the theory of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, and from the mouth of Jesus Himself, Moses is called the author of the Torah. For example: Ex 17:14, 24:4, 34:27; Nm 33:1,2; Dt 31:9,11 within the Pentateuch itself, Jos 1:8, 8:31,32; 1 Kg 2:3; 2 Kg 14:6; Ezr 6:18; Neh 13:1; Dn 9:11-13; Mal 4:4 in the rest of the Old Testament, and Mt 19:8; Jn 5:46,47; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:5 in the New Testament (Block 158). If Christians are to take the Bible as truth, they must reckon with this mountain of claims to Mosaic authorship. Only through a sort of lexical gymnastics, going against the plain meaning of the text, can a view of multiple authorship be supported by one claiming biblical inerrancy. However, the text does record that Joshua added somewhat to the Mosaic corpus, presumably after Moses’ death, which would explain statements such as that recording Moses’ humility (Numbers 12:3), and the account of his death.

While it may be argued whether biblical inerrancy is a “modern” development, it certainly has a basis, at least for evangelical Christians, in theological necessity. Without a completely trustworthy account of God’s work, Christianity is severely crippled, if not killed. It has been shown that the Bible makes a myriad of claims to Mosaic authorship, which entails the exclusion of claims to multiple authorship. No other person besides Joshua is said to have added anything (Joshua 24:26). This especially excludes the Documentary Hypothesis, which would not match up with Biblical claims in authorship or even date of composition. Thus, the concepts of biblical inerrancy and multiple authorship seem to be mutually exclusive. Evidence for multiple authors, such as that provided above, would need to be accounted for, but it should be the policy of Christianity to take the authority of the Bible as absolute, and to hold to it even in the face of contradictory scholarship, in sure and certain faith that the Bible will be justified in the end. So while the doctrine of biblical inerrancy may be disagreed with due to source critical scholarship, it should not be dismissed or labeled as simple ignorance.


Works Cited

Block, Daniel J. "Who Wrote the Pentateuch and When Was It Written?." Apologetics Study Bible. Ed. Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, J.P. Moreland. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007. Print.

Kaiser, Jr., Walter C . The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? Downer's Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Print.

G.K. Chesterton--Science and the Savages

This short essay from Chesterton's book Heretics deals with the fallacies of scientific anthropology and the likelihood of myth becoming fact. One can see a clear influence on C.S. Lewis' argument about Jesus Christ as the "true myth." I've been challenged quite a bit recently on the veracity of ancient Israelite stories in the Bible as similar to other Mesopotamian myths. The conclusion is, of course, that the Biblical narratives are therefore untrue. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates the falsity of such a line of reasoning, with his customary wit and humor.

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore — the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one — absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, “The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy. You can no more be certain in economic history that a man’s desire for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint’s desire for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of ‘70 which did. But that will be because if folk-lore students remain at all, their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present, greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more godlike than studying legends; they create them.

There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true, because everybody tells them. The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever; there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea. But they are not likely to have happened to many people. The second class of their “myths” consist of the stories that are told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere. Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or fictitious it is what is called “a good story;” it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax. But to suggest that some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark impudence. The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy’s head from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning, and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous “je ne vois pas la necessité” we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in anyway make it more likely that the thing was never said at all. It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown. It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand. In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs. It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned. But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is where the first class of so-called myth differs from the second to which I have previously referred. For there is a second class of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on. And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them. Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the, unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena to a god in human form in order to explain them, because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish existence. The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable. The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall on our faces.