Sunday, April 13, 2014

Interpretation and Orthodoxy

The story we tell ourselves about what the Bible is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be used in our lives is at least as important to the Christian life as what the words within Scripture actually say.  The irony, of course, is that we are very often blind to the former and obsess about the latter.  I've been trying for some time now to figure out a way to reflect on this, and I hope the following post is helpful.  As a side note, it has also been too long since I've posted on my blog.  I hope that more posts will follow soon.

We tell the people in our parishes to ask simple questions like, "do you believe the Scripture is the completely inspired word of God?" and, "Do you take the Bible literally?" or again, "do you believe that Scripture contains errors?"

If the answers are anything other than yes (even a qualified yes) then we have tought our parishioners to treat the person they are questioning with suspicion.  I'm sure that each of us have experienced such a conversation.  I suspect that each of us have been on both sides of this conversation as well at some point in our lives.  I have two goals in writing this post.

1.) I want to call into question the efficacy of teaching our parishioners to use rigid questions as tests of orthodoxy.   To my mind they are less than helpful.  If I can succeed in invoking a certain doubt in your mind here this post is a complete success.

2.) I want to argue that the way a person answers this question is not, in and of itself, a marker of orthodox thought -- nor, historically, has it been.  If I can create, in my reader, a safe space in which to explore this question, then this post will (to my mind anyway) be quite worthwhile.

What is at stake when we teach our parishioners that they can determind whether someone is orthodox by how they answer a list of questions?  If you have read this far, it is reasonable to assume that before we can actually address the question, you may (quite rightly) say to me, "the church has always used question and answer as a way to determine orthodoxy.  Indeed, the creeds themselves are in effect a short list of answers to questions which must be believed.  To not believe them is to not be Christian."

So before we say that Orthodoxy itself is at stake, let me underline something that is quite crucial here.  The story of the development of the creeds (orthodoxy) is at least as much a story of the interplay between world politics and religious belief as it is a story about the development of doctrine.  We fool ourselves if we actually think that any of the official formulations of the church (of any denomination) were made in a pure and holy vacuum, devoid of human corruption and power grabs.  Nicea, Chalcedon, Trent, Westminster, Dort, (to name only a few) all involved the winners gaining wealth and power and acceptance at the expense of the losers.  I'm not trying to say that what we believe is corrupted.  I am saying that just as many people died for what we don't believe as for what we do believe.  And the decisions (this is true that is wrong) created (in many instances) those deaths.  At every turn, it wasn't just the Saint's who gave their lives, but also the heretics -- those who were on the loosing end.  Indeed, precisely in the formulation of our faith, the church has been built on the blood of the winners (saints, martyrs) and on the blood of the losers (the heretics, the oppressed, the ostracized).

On a side note, Ortho-Doxy has more to do with correct or right worship than it does belief anyway -- and that is more a function of asking how the church has historically worshiped than what she has historically believed.  Orthodoxy has more to do with Eucharistic Worship (the formal and historic expression of Christian worship) then it does with what the church believes about the Eucharist.

Since none of our beliefs developed in a pure vacuum (or descended from God without anyone being excluded from the community of the faithful)  we cannot say that the beliefs we cherish are holy.  They are beliefs, God alone is holy.

If you are still reading, you may object again and say to me, "when God called Israel out of Egypt, it involved the Israelites believing on The Lord Their God, and it involved the exclusion (and in some cases celebrated and divinely commanded death of) their enemies.  The 'riders have been tossed into the sea' comes into mind."

In reply, it is worth noting that the Egyptian crime was more more than failure to believe in God.  They oppressed God's people.  They held Israel in slavery.  God reveals Himself as the One who releases the oppressed from exile and commands his people to treat the exiles within their midst with mercy.  And, when Israel is punished, it is for failure to love the exile, the widow, the oppressed, and the orphan within their midst.  Indeed, in these moments, God seems to say, "you have become worse than the heathens whom you drove out."  There is a ton of literature about this particular topic here, and I don't have the space to treat it adequately.  For our purposes we must observe that (similar to James, actually) right belief is demonstrated not by a confession of faith but by love without borders or social division.

To bring us back on point, what is at stake when we teach our parishioners that they can determine whether someone is orthodox by asking a series of questions?  Simply put, we separate belief from action.  We say (in essence) "let me determine what you profess to see whether you can be in our community.  If the wrong answers are given, then we may let you in, but we will expect you to change your beliefs.  And if you persist in your wrong beliefs, there really isn't room for you here at this time."  The irony is that by excluding someone who believes differently (whether that exclusion is spoken by us or just felt by them doesn't really matter) our actions simply do not match our own creedal and orthodox beliefs.

When this separation is made, either we actually love our neighbor (in which case their belief really doesn't give us cause for grief or worry) or we love our belief (in which case we defend that belief and use it to define heretics and saints).  If it is in fact our belief that we love, how do we also claim to love God?  What went wrong here?  Why do we teach our parishioners that correct belief is so crucial?  Is it our love of our neighbor or our love of our belief that separates the Christian Community from the world?  Just because we are willing to condemn someone for wrong belief, why do we think God will?

Now to bring us back to my second bullet.  The way a person answers the question, "do you believe Scripture is the inspired word of God" isn't a marker of orthodoxy as such -- nor, historically, has it been.

If the care at hand is Orthodoxy, we really are limited to the early Creedal Formulas -- and these formulas talk about the persons of the trinity and what those persons of the trinity accomplished in human history.  They don't actually talk about Scripture or how to approach Scripture.  For that matter, they also don't mention sin (but I digress).  I can affirm the creeds and believe that Scripture contains all kinds of contradictions, was written by human and divine agents, and developed over thousands and thousands of years.

To be sure, the way I answer the question certainly informs how i approach Scripture.  Indeed, if we answer the question differently than you do then  we probably approach Scripture differently.  But that difference of approach doesn't mean that I don't take the text seriously.  The difference of approach does not mean that I don't think Scripture is normative.  The difference of approach doesn't mean that I put Scripture "on the same plane as any other book."

Approach to Scripture isn't a zero sum game determined by one's view of whether it is inspired.  It isn't as if either one believes it is inspired (and therefore different than every other book) or one believes it isn't (and therefore the same as every other book).  To be sure, one could make such a reduction, but it is an absurd reduction -- indeed, to make such a reduction probably says more about the reasoning process of the reductor than the one who answers the question differently!

In summary, what have we discussed, and what do I hope you'll take away?  We used some common questions that we teach our parishioners to ask others about what they believe about Scripture as an excuse to talk about Orthodoxy itself.  We argued that correct belief is demonstrated by an active and embracing love of others that does not recognize social barriers or expectations but rather seeks to upset them.  We then pointed out the deep and inconsistent separation of action and belief -- a separation that we encourage precisely by teaching our parishioners to ask these types of questions.  We are, of course, darkly hinting that a Christianity which excludes others as a necessary result of her confession of faith is in fact a deeply mistaken and confused Christianity.

We then addressed the second point, namely that the way in which one approaches Scripture is itself relatively irrelevant when the question I'm asking is, "is a person orthodox or not?"  Indeed, one may have all sorts of ways of approaching Scripture, and be entirely orthodox in their love of their neighbor.

In conclusion, please don't think I'm arguing that orthodox belief isn't important.  It is important, maybe even tremendously important.  But the importance we give to orthodox belief isn't the thing that allows us to decide who to love, accept, and support and who to exclude and ignore.

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