[Magdalen] A useful approach to the Bible

[Molly Wolf]

I can't muster that sort of blind faith in Augustine and Aquinas and not even in Bill Wilson, of blessed memory (although I too am happily in recovery, in part through AA, and the Steps and the Serenity Prayer are at my core).  

When I read the Bible, I find that an informed understanding only enriches God's message to me.  Hosea and Jeremiah are companions on my journey, not authorities whose every word is of equal importance.  What is divinely inspired? All of it.  But what I read is the human response to divine inspiration -- our forebears' side of the conversation.  And our forebears were shaped by circumstances and understandings that are not necessarily mine.

I have a background in science and history, and I can no more leave those behind than I could be male.  Asking me to privilege Scripture and tradition above reason asks me to assent to the oppression of half of myself.  "Because the Bible said so" is a statement that makes me suspicious, because that statement has been the hammer in the hand of oppression.

Moreover, my mission is to those who stand on the banks of reason and look across with longing to faith.  I'm not prepared to insist on the primacy of tradition and Scripture if they stand between    people and a God.

I'm with Jim on this one.  And I too am a mystic, but I find mystery in Creation.

Molly

The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain

> On Aug 29, 2015, at 9:16 AM, Ann Markle <ann.markle at aya.yale.edu> wrote:
> 
> I find it arrogant when someone assumes THEY are the one to decide (for
> everyone) what should be retained, what should be discarded or dismissed
> from scripture.  Of course scripture was written by humans.  But what hand
> did God have in it?  What parts were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and what
> parts were not?  Who's to say that THIS is from God and THIS is not?
> That's partly where tradition (the wisdom of those who came before me) and
> reason come in.  I believe that scripture was written by heads that may
> well have been wiser than mine, not some primitive people or primitive
> mind.  Yes, parts are primitive -- parts are a collection of our most
> ancient stories and poems.  That's also where our (collective, not
> individual) reason comes into play -- what parts of scripture are true to
> tradition, and especially true to the Gospel teachings?  What parts are
> TRUTH and WISDOM?  I guess that's one reason I'm doing so well in AA -- I
> assume that some people are wiser than I, and that steps and traditions
> that have worked to save the lives of generations of alcoholics might just
> work for me, too -- rather than dismissing anything that I find unpleasant,
> and finding some rationalization for my personal dislike and dismissal.
> 
> And yes, I give scripture some kind of mystical authority that contemporary
> humans do not have.  I'm a mystic (and glad to be one) -- so "mystical
> authority" seems right by me.  I do believe that God's ways aren't my ways,
> and I can only struggle to discern a little bit of the mind of God, and
> that I dismiss something that I believe contains God's Truth and Wisdom at
> my own peril -- with fear and trembling as some wise one once said.
> 
> Ann
> 
> The Rev. Ann Markle
> Buffalo, NY
> ann.markle at aya.yale.edu
> blog:  www.onewildandpreciouslife.typepad.com
> 
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 11:13 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
> oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> ​Looking at him from the perspective of today, I find Hooker's opinion
>> unconvincing. For that day, it's not at all surprising.  I think that
>> today, knowing what we know about scripture, it has lost some of the pride
>> of place it had back in the day. They had just begun to rediscover Greek
>> and Hebrew in the West, and they still did not have the King James Bible.
>> In Hooker's day, most scholars believed scripture was all handed down
>> somehow from God.
>> Today scholarship demonstrates that scripture is a human production,
>> through and through. We know today far better than Hooker ever could have
>> what the actual content and meaning of scripture is.
>> 
>> Holding that scripture is somehow entitled to some mystical authority seems
>> incredible when it contains material that shows it to be -- in those
>> locations -- the words of humans and certainly not at all the sense of the
>> Eternal one.
>> 
>> And I really think we are here looking at matters that are far more
>> compelling than merely things where you have one opinion and I simply have
>> another.
>> 
>> No, when scripture says it is appropriate to smash children's heads on the
>> rocks, that refutes utterly any claim to divine inspiration. And that is
>> merely one of dozens of such howlers.
>> This is not a discussion where it is just a matter of opinion. We are
>> talking numerous texts which, were they not hiding within the protection of
>> the scriptural canon, would surely be universally be called inappropriate,
>> if not despicable and horrendous claims and actions.
>> 
>> In his introduction to his book, _Who Wrote the Bible?_, Richard Elliot
>> Friedman gives names and dates in a history of the development of the
>> modern view towards scripture (pp. 15-32). One thing which becomes clear is
>> that at the time of Hooker, virtually everyone assumed the Bible was simply
>> god-given. It would be centuries after Hooker before Biblical scholarship
>> came to the conclusion that many hands produced the text that has come down
>> to us, and any illusion of inerrancy has been dashed. Hooker knew nothing
>> of what was learned in the centuries following him, just as the King James
>> Version is unable to benefit from the knowledge of language and history
>> unearthed since the companies ceased their work in 1611.
>>