Tag Archives: atheism

February 25, 2022

Where Did “Historical Criticism” of the Bible Come From? (Part Two)

By Clarke Morledge

Baruch Spinoza is often thought of as the father of the modern world. But in the 17th century, he was not alone in bringing in ideas that would take advantage of the confusion in post-Reformation Europe, and challenging traditional Christian ideas about the Bible. As we explore how the rise of “historical criticism” developed, we can consider the stories of Isaac La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes, and how they tie in with Spinoza’s story.

…. This is the third in a series of blog posts examining the “historical criticism” of the Bible. “Part one” of the history behind “historical criticism” can be found here. Now we look at “part two” of the history behind “historical criticism”…..

 

Spinoza’s Intellectual Compatriots: Isaac La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes

Jeffrey Morrow, author of Three Skeptics and the Bible: La Peyrère, Hobbes, Spinoza, and the Reception of Modern Biblical Criticism, highlights the stories of French philosopher Isaac La Peyrère and English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who influenced Baruch Spinoza, in promoting skepticism about the Bible.

Isaac La Peyrère, like Spinoza, had a “conversos” background, with Jewish family roots. La Peyrère grew up in France as a Protestant, but felt forced to convert to Roman Catholicism towards the end of his life, once he published some of his views on the Bible. La Peyrère was deeply interested in the question of where the “Indians”, the native Americans in the New World, actually came from, as it was not obvious from the Bible as to where such people originated.

Many thinkers during the colonial era, up through the 19th century, tried to figure out the origins of America’s native peoples. Most famously, Joseph Smith popularized the speculative hypothesis that the Native Americans were the descendants of the “Lost Ten Tribes,” who disappeared after the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as described in the Bible. Smith’s “Book of Mormon” continues to enamor people today, though few 21st century anthropologists find any evidence to support the claims presented in the Book of Mormon. Still, it is a fascinating question.

How did Native Americans get to the Americas in the first place? La Peyrère proposed a solution that he believed was consistent with Scriptural teaching that could explain the origin of Native Americans, in his book Prae-Adamitae. Much of La Peyrère’s thesis fits within an orthodox view of the Bible. However, La Peyrère went onto explore more radical ideas about the Bible that would influence Spinoza, and stimulate all sorts of speculations, primarily that Moses had nothing to do with the writing of the Pentateuch. This is what got La Peyrère into trouble.

La Peyrère had been influenced by the Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, who just a few years prior to Prae-Adamitae published his Leviathan. Hobbes had lived his mid-adult life during the intense conflict of the English Civil War, between Puritans like Oliver Cromwell and Roman Catholic sympathizers like King Charles I. Hobbes argued in Leviathan that a strong centralized government was required to prevent civil war, particularly when the participants in the civil conflict were motivated by contrasting theological perspectives. Thomas Hobbes believed that theological dogmatism should always be tempered by a commitment to reason. This appealed to La Peyrère, who had such a family history, where the nature of one’s theological commitments were suspect. It is easy to see how La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes therefore became intellectual companions to Baruch Spinoza.

Among conservative evangelical scholars today, the more extreme conclusions about the Bible made by Baruch Spinoza, and his philosophical friends, are largely rejected. However, some insights made by Spinoza, and his followers, have been incorporated into a more nuanced description of how the Bible came together. A number of evangelical Bible scholars today adopt what might be called variations on the “supplementary hypothesis,” which contends that the substantial core of literary material in the Pentateuch can be traced back to Moses, but that later editors of the text made certain changes in order to keep the material “up to date.” Such changes were made over several centuries until the Pentateuch’s placement in the Old Testament canon became fixed, in the manner that we now have it.

For a classic example, noted by Bible scholar Claude Mariottini, Genesis 14:14 makes a reference to the city of “Dan,” in northern Israel, the place where Abram (Abraham) rescued his nephew, Lot. The problem here is that the name for this city, “Dan,” did not exist during this time period, and the son of Jacob named “Dan” had not yet been born. Furthermore, Moses as an author certainly would not have known anything about the city of “Dan,” as he died before crossing the Jordan River, into the Promised Land. The city of “Dan” would only become settled by the descendants of Dan, during the conquest of the Promised Land described in the Book of Joshua. While scholars continue to debate the specifics of a solution, it is generally agreed that probably some later editor changed the original name of this area to “Dan,” which reflected a more recent understanding of the city’s location. In this sense, it could be understood that the text of Genesis was kept “up to date” by a later editor, as place names often changed names somewhat frequently over the centuries, as people moved around due to displacement by wars, etc.

One central idea behind historical criticism, articulated so controversially by Baruch Spinoza, is that we should analyze the Bible just like we would analyze any other ancient book. There is a sense in which Spinoza’s approach is to be welcomed, but yet there is another sense in which this approach falls flat. Like many of the great ancient books, the Bible is truly a great work of human literature, and historical criticism has done much to enhance our appreciation and understanding of the historical context of the Bible as literature. However, most ancient books lack a claim to being divine revelation, whereas the uniqueness of the Bible is founded upon the idea that it is the inspired Word of God. The tendency among certain advocates of historical criticism to divorce the human, literary aspects of the Scriptural text from the claim of divine inspiration is a bad habit of mind, that has had far reaching consequences over the recent centuries.

Historical Criticism: A Tool for Deconstruction … Or Reconstruction, for Christian Faith?

A much repeated story these days is that for some, who grow up in a Christian community, the personal discovery of the “historical criticism” of the Bible leads to a deconstruction of Christian faith. Walter Lippmann, a 20th century journalist and political theorist, famously stated that it is the “acids of modernity” that corrode traditional faith. For some this corrosion results in a form of “progressive Christianity” that hangs onto Christian faith, but only by a slim thread of substance. For others, it leads to agnosticism, if not outright atheism. But is such corrosion the only trajectory of such deconstruction? Or can it instead lead to a type of reconstruction of faith, placed on better footing?

Steven Nadler, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in his A Book Forged in Hell, that was partially reviewed in a previous blog post, makes much of Spinoza’s intention to find a more “scientific” approach to the Bible, that supersedes the theological wrangling of different dogmatic commitments to the Bible. In 17th century Europe, where theological disputes often boiled over into heated political disputes, that even led to violence, Spinoza argued that a more rational approach to the Bible, based on “scientific” principles, would lead to peace between those who held different views of the Bible.

Spinoza despised superstition, assigned both traditional Judaism and Christianity into that category, and ironically argued that a belief in miracles was actually counter to the true knowledge of God. For Spinoza, the value of Scripture comes from its ability to move people to treat others with justice and charity, as would any other piece of great literature. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, of the Bible as a source for encouraging good moral behavior, that Spinoza would ascribe the notion of “divine” to the Bible. Spinoza’s views, radical for the 17th century, have become the assumed foundation for a secular worldview, in the 21st century, where science is often viewed as the only reliable, objective means for human thought and ethics.

The problem with this narrative is that it assumes that pure objectivity, when it comes to historical criticism, is rationally attainable. Professional historians are quick to say they deal more in the realm of historical probabilities, rather than historical certainties. Though a noble aim, the quest for certainty, in using the scientific tools of historical criticism, even for interpreting the Bible, does not result in the type of certainty that many would like.

Furthermore, the claim of the Bible itself, is not that it is a collection of morally inspiring thoughts derived from merely human authors. Rather, the Bible itself claims to be the inspired Word of God, surely written by humans, but not merely human, being divinely originated as well.  However, if one follows the path of Spinoza that Steven Nadler admiringly portrays, that inherently corrosive terminus of deconstruction is all but guaranteed. Like pulling on the loose threads of a sweater, as one’s faith begins to unravel, some might try to salvage some of those loose threads, whereas others will simply toss the whole mess of sweater remains in the garbage. Is there yet not another path?

Towards the Reconstruction of Christian Faith

Jeffrey Morrow, the author of Three Skeptics and the Bible, was raised culturally Jewish, then became a Protestant evangelical, and then ultimately entered the Roman Catholic Church, and who is now a theologian at Seton Hall University. In Three Skeptics and the Bible, Morrow challenges the narrative that true objectivity, when it comes to historical criticism, is possible. Contemporary historical criticism rightly has explored the reception history of the Bible, as the message of the Bible has been received by different communities across the ages in very different ways. Nevertheless, Morrow argues that the discipline of historical criticism itself has had its own reception history, particularly since its genesis in the thought of Baruch Spinoza and his 17th century philosophical friends.

Morrow’s thesis is that the original development of historical criticism, pioneered by Spinoza, is rooted in the historical context of the 17th century, political church-state debate. The questions that Spinoza faced when reading the Bible were not new to him. People had been wrestling with such questions for centuries. What was new with Spinoza was his desire to take the control of Biblical interpretation out of the hands of spiritual authorities and place it in the hands of the political authorities of the state. In Spinoza’s historical context of living in the pluralism of 17th century Dutch society, this meant that every spiritual authority, whether it be Jewish, Protestant or Roman Catholic, would come under the secular authority of the state.

Did Baruch Spinoza really understand the drawn-out consequences of his own thesis? One specific critique of historical criticism, in its most skeptical form, is that in the effort to read the Bible like any piece of ancient literature, the tendency to set aside the claim that God had a hand in authoring the Bible, robs the text of its underlying unity. We all know that the Bible was written by dozens of authors, across many centuries, in many different specific historical and literary contexts. But what keeps the Bible together as a whole is buttressed by the claim that God is ultimately the divine author throughout, working through the human authors, in order to give us a coherent, unified text. Without that sense of an underlying unity, the tendency among some scholars is to divide the Scriptures into multiple, disparate parts, thus cutting away the coherency of the text, that has been maintained by Jewish and Christian readers for centuries.

Furthermore, this Scriptural text was meant to be read, studied, prayed through, and sung in community. The Bible was not meant to be merely a book. Rather, it was meant to be an invitation to experience the deep mysteries of life, within the context of corporate worship. Spinoza, prompted by La Peyrère and Hobbes, turned the Bible into a mere book, to be dissected.

This does not mean we should simply gloss over the diversity in the Scriptural text as being inconsequential. For example, why is it that certain parts of the Pentateuch exclusively use the name “Yahweh” (singular) for God, while other parts only use the name “Elohim” (plural) for God? Does the Old Testament embrace some concept of a “divine council”? Some Christians unfortunately take a Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” approach to such questions. Instead the tools provided by historical criticism can help us to make better sense of what the text is trying to tell us. The probing challenges offered by Baruch Spinoza and his followers, properly framed, without going to extremes, can actually help us.

As a Roman Catholic, Jeffrey Morrow comes down on the Protestant Reformers, contending that the trend away from more allegorical readings of the Bible, and a concern for a more literal approach to Scripture, inevitably led to the skepticism of La Peyrère, Hobbes, and Spinoza. This critique is difficult for a Protestant evangelical like me to hear, but it is still worth hearing. Morrow values the sacramental aspect of interacting with the Bible, something that many of my fellow Protestants tend to be weaker on than our Roman Catholic friends.

The main lesson offered by Morrow in his Three Skeptics and the Bible is that while historical criticism, properly understood, can indeed inform our understanding of the Bible, it nevertheless can not completely supersede the bias of the scholar. When we only look to scholars for the answers to our theological questions, divorced from a local Christian community, it can easily distort our vision of faith. Therefore, if left unchecked, such biases can lead to certain habits of mind that can cloud our understanding of the Bible, as it was meant to be understood by God. Instead, Christians need to be a part of a healthy local church, where people can wrestle with their questions about the Bible, in an atmosphere of worship, love, support, and understanding.

Historical criticism of the Bible has certain benefits, but it also has certain limitations. If we begin our study of the Bible with a certain radical skepticism of thought, that sets off any claim to divine inspiration to the side, then it is very difficult to get back to a genuinely historically orthodox perspective of the Christian faith. It often leads to a deconstruction of Christian faith. On the other hand, if we approach the text of Scripture with more of a trust in God’s ability to communicate through Scripture, and instead apply skepticism towards our own ability to understand the text, then it is more likely that this will lead to a reconstruction of faith, gaining a greater sense of confidence that God is truly speaking to us, through His Word in Scripture.

In our next blog post in this series, coming out in a week or so, we will look at a short case study (shorter than this current blog post), examining how the assumptions brought to the Scriptural text will make a difference when applying historical criticism. Stay tuned.

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February 19, 2022

Where Did “Historical Criticism” of the Bible Come From? (Part One)

By Clarke Morledge

In the previous blog post in this series, we considered a useful definition of “historical criticism” of the Bible. Put succinctly, historical criticism seeks to understand the origins of ancient texts in order to better get at the world “behind the text.” As the most read book ever written, the Bible qualifies as one of the most studied book, in the field of historical criticism.

But what are the roots of historical criticism, when it comes to the Bible? Where did historical criticism come from? Or to put it another way, what are the habits of mind, associated with historical criticism, that can influence how even Christians today read the Bible, and where did these habits originate?

In this second blog post from this series (the first one is here), we look at the first of two books that explore the history behind “historical criticism,” as seen through the lives of a group of 17th century European philosophers. “Part two” will come out about a week from now. Stick around.

 

Historical Criticism on the “Historical Criticism” Movement

Several books that I have recently read examines the question above in detail, by applying historical criticism to the development of historical criticism itself, by looking at the some of leading early figures of the movement, namely Isaac La Peyrère, Thomas Hobbes, and especially Baruch Spinoza. Steven Nadler, the author of A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, tells us the story of Baruch Spinoza’s most controversial 17th century book, that really kick started the whole historical criticism movement.

Baruch Spinoza grew up in the Spanish Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Western Europe had been engulfed in a series of religious wars, commonly known as the Thirty Years War, where nearly 1 out of 4 (or 5) Europeans died, prior to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, as Roman Catholics and Protestants fought against one another for control of various parts of Europe. The conflagration pretty much ended the medieval social order established by the Holy Roman Empire, resulting in the development of various city-states and regional governments, each one declaring adherence to one form of Roman Catholic or Protestant confession, or another.

Spinoza’s family had been “conversos,” Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity on the Iberian peninsula. However, such “conversos” were often viewed with suspicion by more established Christians, as to whether they were truly converted. When Spinoza’s family left to go to Amsterdam, to take advantage of the growing religious diversity there in the Netherlands, they were hoping to re-establish their roots in the Jewish faith. However, at age 23, Baruch Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam, for expressing theological views at the time that did not agree with the local rabbis. Spinoza had been raised to take over the family import business, but he was able to release himself from these obligations in order to dedicate himself fully to the task of doing philosophy.

He had been left in relative obscurity, until the publication of his Theologico-Political Treatise, in 1670. In his various writings, Spinoza argued that the hotly contested theological conflicts of the day could not be resolved by spiritual authorities alone. Rather, Spinoza argued for a type of “scientific” enterprise that would seek to resolve the conflicts between Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews on how to interpret the Bible. But the development of his ideas led critics to conclude that Spinoza had become an atheist, and that his book(s) should be banned.

Spinoza the Controversialist

The most well known controversial claim made by Spinoza had to do with the authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Like most pious Jews (and Christians) of the time, he was taught in synagogue to believe that Moses wrote everything we find in those five books. Spinoza did note, however, some problems with that entire teaching. But he certainly was not the first to do so.

For example, at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, the last chapter describes the death of Moses. Scholars for centuries had concluded that Moses simply could not have written about his death, prior to dying himself. The most common solution to this was to suggest that it was Joshua who added in the part about Moses’ death, at a later point in time.

The 4th century Bible translator of the Latin Vulgate, Jerome, living well over a thousand years before Spinoza, believed that Ezra, the scribal priest living after the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, in the 5th c. BCE, either “edited” or “restored” the first five Books of Moses, nearer to the form we now have them.

However, what made Spinoza so controversial is that he proposed a far more radical solution to some of the problems found in the Pentateuch. Instead of suggesting that certain parts of the Pentateuch were added in later or edited, by another scribe, Spinoza concluded that very little, if anything, in those five books could be attributed to Moses in the first place. In other words, much of what we read in the Pentateuch was written perhaps centuries after Moses even lived.

But that was just the start for Spinoza. Spinoza went onto say that the Bible was not literally the Word of God, that divine providence and Scriptural prophecy did not work the way most Jews and Christians thought it did, and that the miracles found in the Bible never happened. For most Jews and Christians alike, Spinoza’s views were scandalous. One particular critic of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise called it “a book forged in hell by the devil himself.”

It would be several centuries before Julius Wellhausen would teach his students about the “documentary hypothesis,” but the ground work for such radical views about the Bible had been laid by Spinoza. Today, such views about the Bible remain standard teaching among the vast majority of departments of religion in secular (and sometimes even in some Christian) universities.

The World After Baruch Spinoza

The 21st century West lives in the shadow of Baruch Spinoza. Some historians speak of the world before Spinoza as “the Age of Faith.” After Spinoza, they say the world entered “the Age of Reason.” What will future historians think of the 21st century remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the impact of Spinoza’s ideas in the wake of the Thirty Years War, and the bitter strife between Roman Catholics and Protestant Reformers, continues to be felt today.

I will have more to say about Spinoza, and Steven Nadler’s analysis of Spinoza’s writings and life, in “part two” of the history behind “historical criticism” coming soon. Plus, I will also include a brief look at Isaac La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes, two other 17th century philosophers who stimulated the thought of Baruch Spinoza, in reshaping the world we live in today. Stay tuned.

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February 12, 2022

What is “Historical Criticism” of the Bible?

By Clarke Morledge

Today we begin a first in a series of occasional posts, looking at the “historical criticism” of the Bible, the good and the bad of modern thinking habits about Scripture…..

A decade or so ago, some popular news magazines would publish eye-catching cover articles around Christmas and Easter, featuring scholars who would challenge traditional Christian doctrines, like the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus. Now, in the age of social media, we are bombarded on our cell phones with stories almost all of the time, that tell us that everything we once knew about the Bible is completely wrong.

The intellectual force behind this skepticism has a track record over the last few centuries. It all comes from the rise of “historical criticism” of the Bible. Historical criticism is generally associated with what is taught in nearly every university department of religion today.  Ironically however, very few churches, even evangelical ones, talk about it. But with the advent of the Internet, where your typical Sunday sermon can be fact checked in less than a minute with a Google search, the fruits of historical criticism scholarship become readily available to anyone having a SmartPhone in their pocket.

The development of “historical criticism” of the Bible has shifted the way Christians, and the culture at large, has viewed the Bible, in both positive and negative ways. What is “historical criticism” all about?

Defining “Historical Criticism” of the Bible

Yet what exactly is historical criticism of the Bible? Historical criticism seeks to understand the origins of ancient texts in order to better get at the world “behind the text.” Some refer to historical criticism as “higher criticism,” or the “historical critical method,” terms which broadly speaking are synonymous. Some conservative evangelical responses to historical criticism are completely in the negative, as historical criticism is often associated with denying the accuracy of the Bible and rejecting the supernatural character of the Scriptures. But the story with historical criticism is really more complicated than that.

As Baptist New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner writes in an essay for the CSB Apologetics Study Bible, “Has Historical Criticism Proved the Bible False?,” the rise of historical criticism “has also benefitted the church.” The Christian faith is historically rooted, so we need not fear historical research into the origins of the Bible. For example, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeological and literary research into the Ancient Near East, and the study of the Greco-Roman world has given us invaluable information that helps us to better appreciate the historical context in which the Bible was written (read Dr. Schreiner’s full essay here).

Historical criticism has also helped to correct some wrong assumptions about how the Bible works. Many Christians have wrongly assumed that the New Testament was somehow mystically downloaded into the brains of New Testament writers in some “special ‘Holy Ghost’ language,” which was then transcribed onto papyrus. The following may sound like a caricature, but it is not too far from how many church-going people think about biblical inspiration:

It is as though the divine inspiration of the Bible means that the Apostle Paul would somehow fall into a trance when he wrote his letters, to find that his hand was moving with pen, without his control, only to wake up later from his trance, and then wonder out loud, “Maybe I should read what I just wrote!”

While this type of “divine dictation” thinking about so-called “biblical inspiration,” or “divine download,” as Dr. Michael Heiser describes it, might appeal to science-fiction lovers, etc., it is really more reflective of a New Age Movement view of the Bible, as opposed to a truly Christian view of biblical inspiration. To our benefit, historical criticism has “demonstrated that the NT was written in the common Greek of the day,” says Dr. Schreiner, using styles of literary genre that were relevant to that time period.

Biblical inspiration really means that instead of overriding the mental faculties of the Scriptural author, God used the personalities and thought processes of folks like the Apostle Paul to reveal divinely authoritative truth, and historical criticism has helped to confirm this. Furthermore, according to Dr. Schreiner, careful research has given us more accurate English translations of the Bible as newer manuscripts discoveries have brought us closer and closer to the original text of the New Testament.

Some call this particular quest for more accurate Bible translations “lower criticism” of the Bible. This quest uses the basic tools of historical criticism, and the advances we have in this field partly explains why we keep seeing new English translations of the Bible popping up on the book market, every few years or so.

Nevertheless, historical criticism has also sadly introduced certain habits of mind that have caused many to lose confidence in the veracity of Holy Scripture. Despite the above benefits noted by Dr. Schreiner, historical criticism has at times introduced certain ideas that have “threatened the faith of evangelical believers” over the last few centuries.

For example, 19th century German scholar Julius Wellhausen popularized the so-called “documentary hypothesis,” that challenges the traditional idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, by claiming that the Pentateuch was actually derived from at least four different sources, that were later assembled together by some unknown editor, after the Babylonian Exile, centuries after Moses even lived. Now, almost two centuries later, Wellhausen’s ideas continue to have an enormous influence on today’s scholarship. However, these ideas also have been met with a healthy amount of criticism, as new insights challenge old assumptions.

As Schreiner describes it, “the ‘assured results’ of scholarship in one generation are often vigorously challenged by the next.” So, while the debate among scholars concerning historical criticism continues, the existence of the debate itself continues to have a broader impact on both the culture at large and the church in particular, by implanting certain habits of mind that can distort how we read the Bible. What are these habits of mind, associated with historical criticism, that can influence how even Christians today read the Bible, and where did these habits originally come from?

I will save the answer to that question for the next blog post in this series. In this series, I will be reviewing some books that fill out the story of “historical criticism,” offering ways where misguided historical critical methodologies have led people astray in their approach to the Bible, as well as examples of how historical criticism can actually help people better appreciate the Bible. Along the way, I will include some in-depth case studies that show where a not-so-critical approach to historical criticism (pun intended) can sometimes get people into trouble, without needing to.

Stay tuned. I will post the next installment in about a week or so.

UPDATE:

Other posts in this series:

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October 14, 2019

The Silver Chair: C.S. Lewis Against the Seduction of Secularism

By Clarke Morledge

C.S. Lewis’ 1953 fantasy children’s novel has a scene where Jill and Eunace, the human children, along with their faithful, yet gloomy companion and Marsh-Wiggle, Puddlegum, have been living underground, for what seemed like forever. In their search to find Prince Rillian, they were stuck in a maze of dark caverns and sailing the Sunless Sea, in a world governed by a witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle. The children and Puddlegum have not seen the sun for a long, long period of time. The Green Lady seeks to enchant the others, in hopes of preventing them from returning to Narnia, and meet up with Aslan:

Slowly and gravely the Witch repeated, “There is no sun.” And they all said nothing. She repeated, in a softer and deeper voice. “There is no sun.” After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together. “You are right. There is no sun.” It was such a relief to give in and say it.

“There never was a sun,” said the Witch.

“No. There never was a sun,” said the Prince, and the Marsh-wiggle, and the children.

For the last few minutes Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs. And now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said:

“There’s Aslan.”

C. S. Lewis had grown up as an atheist, eventually becoming a Christian, where the love of Christ showed him the truly reality of things. The Green Lady represents for Lewis the seductive power of secularism, bent on keeping us from seeing reality, as it really is. Prince Rillian had been imprisoned, in a spiritual haze, by the power of the Silver Chair, keeping him in spiritual bondage. The Green Lady was hoping to lure the young humans as well into her control, and away from Aslan.

But the children, Puddlegum, and the Prince were able to break free from the clutches of the Green Lady. The Green Lady was exposed as a deceptive serpent, and killed by Prince Rillian. The group was then able to clearly make their way back to the surface, and see the sun again in Narnia.

While there are many competitors to a Christian worldview, I find that Lewis had it right, that the greatest threat of all is secularism, whereby “religion” is shoved into a little, privatized corner. The “real” world, according to secularism, is a world whereby God is dismissed as a fantasy, an irrational, non-evidenced belief, that has been superseded by the world of reason, science and technology. The belief in “scientism,” that contends that only that which can be demonstrated scientifically is really true, reigns supreme in a secular world. The supernatural world of Narnia is merely an illusion, a “virus of the mind,” to quote Richard Dawkins.

The secular atheist rejects the God of the Bible because of insufficient evidence. There is no “sun” and there is no “Aslan” because we have not seen either, living in this secularized world. Well, at least, we have seen no evidence for either in a really, really long time.

And yet, Jill was compelled to remind the others about Aslan.

Like Jill, the Christian community is that assembly of people who are called to remind others about Aslan, to bear witness to the story of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel.

Sadly, there are times whereby the Christian church has reversed the roles, content to live in the land of the Sunless Sea herself. I have spoken with many an agnostic or atheist, who felt a sense of relief, when they were able to crawl out of their experience, in what they perceived as the dark world of “Christianity,” and discover the world “above” whereby they see the “sunshine” of reason, empiricism, and scientism.

I find that when atheists adopt this narrative, it is generally an indicator that the kind of “Christianity” that they emerged out of is one of a Christian community that has forgotten its true calling. Such a distorted “Christianity” has resorted to a type of navel gazing, that seems so self-absorbed with its own internal affairs, that it has forgotten its primary mission; that is, to be the Jills of planet earth, to remember and speak out words of true hope to a lost world, “There’s Aslan.”

After all, properly understood, the Christian faith is not opposed to rationality or scientific exploration. There is no war between the Bible and science.

Nor does genuine Christian faith seek to impose some archaic standard of morality on others today, merely lifted out of a Bronze age, that is better left forgotten. Rather, Christian morality seeks to illuminate the true of nature of what it means to be human.

Furthermore, a distorted “Christianity” often loses sight of the unity believers are called to have with one another.  As author Mac Pier puts it, “Disunity within the church breeds atheism in the world.” Such disunity can often introduce discouragement among the believers, such that we care less about God’s larger mission, to spread the Good News of Jesus. Instead, many Christians will often travel the path of least resistance, going along with the flow, seduced by the voices of the Green Ladies of this life.

As a Christian, are you being lulled into the enchantment of a purely secular world, or are you like Jill, who must remember something at all costs?

“There’s Aslan.”

 

 

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June 29, 2018

Do the “New Atheists” Get Their History Right?

By Clarke Morledge

“The Course of Empire: The Destruction.” Thomas Cole, 1836, showing the Sack of Rome in 410 A.D., by the pagan Visigoths.  But was the destruction of classical Greco-Roman culture, really the fault of the Christians instead?

You might have heard some of these historical claims before: Jesus never existed. The emperor Constantine colluded with church leaders at Nicea to fix the New Testament canon. Medieval Christians believed the Bible to teach that the earth was flat, until Christopher Columbus proved them wrong. Christians persecuted leading early scientists, in order to defend their erroneous Bible. And on it goes.

I have addressed some of these topics before on Veracity (Jesus “mythicism”, Constantine and Nicea, the Giordano Bruno affair). But someone could easily dredge up the ad hominem claim, that as a Christian, my sympathies are biased, and can not be trusted by any rational, thinking person. For the sake of the argument, let me concede the criticism: Why take my word for anything?

In answering this, I would suggest that readers consult a fascinating website, History for Atheists. Tim O’Neill does a great job dismantling such pseudo-historical claims, that get uncritically passed on over the Internet, and through television media, advancing the agenda of so-called “New Atheists,” along the lines of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But what makes Tim O’Neill compelling is that he is an unapologetic atheist himself. He would not find much credible to my Christian faith.

Of course, I would beg to differ. But O’Neill is actually an ally for truth, when it comes to history. Tim O’Neill addresses some of the most egregious pseudo-historical claims made by some atheists, in a very substantive and mind-opening manner. For example, in early June, 2018, the New York Times reviewed a book by Catherine Nixey, THE DARKENING AGE: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, that attempts to revive the old, worn-out thesis that the rise of Christianity in the early medieval period led to the so-called “Dark Ages,” through the wholesale violent destruction of classical Greco-Roman culture. Nixey is regarded by some as an “Edward Gibbon” of the post-modern era. In his 18th century classic, The History of the Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, Gibbon popularized the thesis that the rise of Christianity played a significant role in the decline of ancient Rome.

For example, Nixey builds on the worst claim of Candida Moss, Notre Dame professor and author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom , discussed here on Veracity, that the Christians made up nearly all of the persecution stories of martyrs dying for their faith, under pagan Rome. Such propaganda was used as justification for committing appalling violence against their pagan neighbors.

Those “bad” and “evil” Christians!!

Sure enough, if you go to Tim O’Neill’s website, he has a highly critical review of Nixey’s work. Yes, there were cases of violence, statues being destroyed by some Christian enthusiasts, and various Christian martyrdom stories of the early church were exaggerated. However, in the early medieval period, there was clearly a conscious attempt by early medieval Christians to recover what they thought to be the best of classical, pagan culture, that was not in conflict with the Bible. Christianity superseded Roman paganism, but Nixey greatly overplays her “violent, ruthless and intolerant” story of the Christians.  In response, O’Neill is simply brilliant.

As British historian Dan jones says, “History is a vaccine against propaganda.” Even extreme atheist propaganda. How true that is!

The next time you hear about some startling historical claim that tries to throw Christianity into the dustbin of history, you might want to “fact check” those claims by consulting History for Atheists. O’Neill has his biases, but honestly and gladly, he admits them. If only every Christian would be as ruthlessly a seeker of historical truth as Tim O’Neill is, but that is a topic for some other blog post…

 

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