Blooming
I have recently (and somewhat belatedly) been reading a book by Harold Bloom called The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.There are one or two really thought provoking ideas he has already raised for me very early on that I want to discuss here. Let's start with this:
"...the J writer (writer of the early parts of the Pentateuch) deserves to be called the most blasphemous of all authors ever...priests and cultic scribes seem to have been scandalized by [her] ironical freedom in portraying Yahweh...we realize that the Western worship of God...is the worship of a literary character."
I have no time at all for the abritrary presumptions of his redactionist criticism or the implication that God is merely a symbol or archetype, however, I find the idea that the scriptures themselves are blasphemous a fascinating one.
I wonder - if we stopped reading the Bible as a "guidebook for life" or a kind of theological system and read it, instead, as an ingenius masterpiece which provides us a complex, layered, literary experience of the person of God, would we find it, in many places an affront to our traditionalized, chlorinated and somewhat technical view of the deity?
I think it is very difficult to wave aside the proliferation in scripture of rhetorical contradiction and irony - all of which, I think, serve - not to weaken its sense of truth - but inestimably deepen it.
Bloom's respect for scripture is merely a literary one - mine is that and far more, but looking at it through his eyes makes me wonder if I haven't missed some of the frightening edges over which the abyss of God is looming.
posted by Lian at 5:52 pm
23 Comments:
I think that there should always be an element of fear in our relationship to God. I have heard sermons on the "Fear of God" and was told that it is not the same kind of fear that we use as a regular term...I disagree with this, however. I think that if we were honest and really looked at God, we would feel a sense of good ol'fashioned fear. This is the mighty Creator, willing to destroy His own Son in a most horrific way. Who are we to water down such a God? Yes there is much about Him to make us uncomfortable.
10:17 am
The person of God, I feel like I haven’t experienced that in a very long time.
I’m with Erica God turned people to salt and struck them down and created the flood and will judge people and let them go to hell. I want to have a balance between the technical deciphering of the bible and the literary experience of the person of God bit too.
corey
10:17 am
I think that we approach the bible in a completely mystical way which is wrong. That goes for conservatives as well as pentecostal/charismatics.
We are forever aiming to discover the will of God for our lives when all we need is in the bible.
So when church and state were originaly separated the christians went on trying to find God mysticaly where as other men approached the bible as a set of rules on which to build a free society.
As such the law of God is the only workable framework upon which a free society can be built.
The real reason Muslims, Greenies, Terrorist and Socialist hate the west.
Of course the law of God when separated from it's original intent can be as enslaving as any other philosophy. The bible itself ephasises that very fact though.
12:33 pm
I'm a bit confused, Phillip - are you suggesting that Western society is based upon the Bible, or, more importantly, that the Bible is a kind of manifesto of democracy or the perfect social structure?
6:35 pm
An police officer, lawyer or magistrate will tell you that our system of law is based upon the ten commandments.
Most of the problems that we face in a western society is where other philosophies creep in and take away from what is essentialy a judeo/christian value system.
The whole idea of free enterprise is based upon old testament teachings.
We know God recognises property rights simply on the basis of Him commanding us not to steal.
Democracy can work when used to filter such a value system as ours.
What if however we lived in a society where the mass population decided anyone over the age of sixty had lived their time on earth?
In fact it will probably be quite democratic when the worlds armies try to wipe out Israel.
So yes the Judeo/Christian ethic is foundational to a free society and this is one of the key things that validates christianity from other religions.
You will never build a free society on shariah law or any other philosophy.
Not sure if that's any clearer.
Cheers
9:31 pm
"Most of the problems that we face in a western society is where other philosophies creep in and take away from what is essentialy a judeo/christian value system."
"You will never build a free society on shariah law or any other philosophy."
wow. i'm stunned. george bush is that you? have you even been to another country before and observed their law and people completely removed from western/christian values? this sort of thinking is exactly what has lead us to the perverted divine right we now champion in this country.
5:46 am
Chuck, actually I agree that the Judeo/Christian Law is a valuable one in running a country. THe countries that are flourishing now are ones that are or once were based on that sort of Law. The countries that don't seem to be flourishing, like some countries in Africa and Asia for instance, are ones not based on that law.
This is quite a funny discussion since it has little or nothing to do with the accompanying blog.
10:08 am
I really don't think you can look at what's going in Africa and parts of Asia and attribute that to a religious or even cultural difference and completely ignore the reality of post-colonialism. From what I understand, Burma/Myanmar was almost utopian before the Brits came in and tried to convince them they were completely backwards.
The telling comparison would be between the various pre-colonial situations in some of these countries and our own culture.
-Dan
P.S. I am interested in the idea of a Hebraic sense of property rights. The fact that the ancient Hebrews were actually required to return all property to it's original ancestral owners suggests, I think, a very profound difference between the way our cultures think about property.
P.P.S. Phillip, I have yet to see this example of a "free society" built on Judeo/Christian values. In fact, I have yet to see evidence of any nation in history which did anything more than pay lip service to Christ. I don't hate our nation or the west, but there is no way around the fact that our great edifices are all built on the blood and bones of murdered innocents.
2:33 pm
We live in a free society based upon those values mentioned.
Not perfect however you enjoy a freedom that many around the globe will never know.
Again any police officer, magistrate etc will tell you that our system of law is based upon the ten commandments.
If you are not aware of how free our society is then you have a problem in how you are thinking.
If you don't think that the value system associated with christianity is able to be used to build a free society upon why would you be a christian at all? (I,m assuming that you are).
I would be interested to know what you mean by the perverted divine right attitude, Chuck.
If there are examples that prove me wrong please point me to them and i'll check them out.
Regards
9:13 pm
What "any police officer, magistrate, etc" will tell me is no indication of historical or anthropological truth. I don't imagine the imperatives laid forth in the ten commandments to be unique to the ancient Hebrew people. And while I recognize your point that the constitution is very interested in establishing property rights for citizens, it is also true that it was only interested in establishing those rights for anglo males. It is also true that this "property" was fundamentally grounded in an act of theft which continued up until the fairly recent past.
Let me reverse your statement by saying, if you are not aware of how corrupt and exploitive our nation is, how covered in innocent blood its hands are, "then you have a problem in how you are thinking". I am thankful for the political freedom we have, but I have serious doubts about the value of our freedom, about the way we use it, and about what our freedom costs others.
I think rather than living in a society "based upon [Judeo-Christian] values" we live in a society which is based on a much broader discourse which happens to include various interpretations of Judeo-Christian texts and traditions.
The or kind or quality of tribe you can build is far from the only reason to adopt a faith or value system. I don't think following Christ means participating in the creation of an ideal society, or making better families or anything of that sort. Consider the "hard sayings" of Christ. Consider the idea of actually dying to self. Consider the idea that family and state should be nothing to one before one's desire to follow Christ.
Incidentally, your assumption is incorrect, I am not a Christian by faith. (However, as a Westerner it is hard to divorce my own thinking, my own valuations, as detached from the model of action which the Christ of the Gospels gives us.)
6:15 am
Phillip,
I agree with you that we live in a remarkably free society, but I don't think that it is based on the Law of Moses. I also agree with the fact that the underlying morals of the 10 commandments are not necessarily unique to the Judeo-Christian heritage (C.S. Lewis wrote anentire book comparing the underlying moral framework of several major civilizations).
We need to be careful not to confuse following Christ with "Christian society." Living in a free society is not necessarily God's will for his people. I hav eheard it said that, as we pray for the non-Western persecuted church because they are persecuted, the persecuted church prays for us because we live opulently and apathetically. What part of Christ's teachings say: "If you follow my word, I will guarantee that you will live in political freedom."
I also agree that the political and economic stress that people in places such as Africa and parts of Asia live in has more to do with factors (as has been suggested) like colonialism, overpopulation, and an underabundance of natural resources.
7:31 am
P.S. I AM a follower of Christ, but I happen to agree with dan. I think he makes a very valid, logical, and historically correct point.
7:35 am
P.P.S.
Chad,
Great post - well taken.
7:37 am
Yeah, I'm with Dan on this one, too.
I actually think Christ, himself, was so a-political it is striking. Also, as Dan mentioned, I think any American (or Australian, European etc) would have found the Hebrew way of life shockingly different from ours.
That, in fact is a small part of what I was trying to hint at in my post - the God of the Bible is a shocking and frightening and discomfiting one compared to the "Judeo-Christian" God we have formed in our western religion.
10:57 am
Then do you think that God gave the law as an arbitrary set of rules or as something necessary and suited to the way human beings were created?
When we suggest to anyone that they should repent what do we mean? What should they turn to? Surely not to a God who gives us a system of law that shows us he is somewhat of a monster.
Of course becoming a christian will not mean automatically being part of a larger utopian society. Unless of course that whole society shared those same values also.
Western society does have a mix of values but is however based initialy upon the Law as given to Moses.
Of course variations of enterpretation exist and though the end result is not perfect it is more in the ball park than nations built upon other philosophies. Again please point me to examples of my error on this.
I know words are easy so we can simply dismiss an arguement by saying I don't believe that. Those who study law know better of course.
I would suggest you chat with a couple of lawyers and see if you can be so dismissive.
Have there been wrongs done in the past? of course. That itself does not take away from what we have today.
Sometimes police are corrupt. Should we now dismantle our whole police force? If i suggest we have a great police force does that imply my support for those who have been corrupt also?
I trust my words are not coming across as harsher than intended.
Regards
5:00 pm
thanks for hanging in here phillip amid the sea of disagreement. though i realize you are inadvertantly being backed into a theological corner. let me pose this question to you: how does a country like say...japan, built on no judeo/christian values whatsoever (with a population of less than .01% christians), not only economically flourish, but in addition maintain a homocide rate of .62% compared to america's 5.72%? for a country that knows virtually nothing about 'ye shall have no other gods before me' or 'ye shall not murder' they're doin' pretty good for themselves. maybe, just maybe there's alot more to this than you or i know my friend.
6:30 pm
Phillip, my point isn't simply that wrongs have done in the past. My suggestion is that our freedom, stability, and wealth (property) are fundamentally tied to violence. That which is founded on violence is not founded in Christ. Ergo, as a nation, we are not founded in Christ.
Is there freedom here (the US)? Maybe. But is there justice? And if so, to what extent? Of what value, I wonder, is freedom founded in injustice? Moreover which of these two is the predominant concern of the Jewish deity--freedom or justice?
Look, this doesn't mean I think the US is a horrible place (relative to others). I certainly don't think the US is the only nation with blood on it's hands. Neither do I think that the West can only be thought of as villianous and evil and the East only as victim. And I do think we have amazing stories of greatness, of creation, of virtue. But realistically, our law is human both in conception and (obviously) enforcement.
What is done in the past "does not take away from what we have today"? Sure it does, especially if you're a victim or the child of a victim. If you're black in the US, then what happened in the past has a hell of a lot to do with what you have (and what you don't have) today. Likewise, if you're a Native American, then what happened in the past bears heavily on what you have today... I have a hard time reading our histories and coming to the conclusion that basically most folks wanted to do the right thing, that most folks just wanted to be Christ-like, but oops! just like that we slaughtered, raped, and mutilated indigeneous peoples to the point of virtual extinction (I believe the word is genocide), treated a huge segment of our population worse than dogs (until the mid-20th century!)... How long does the list have to be? Do we have to talk about what we've done to the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the labor activists, the homosexuals?
Patting ourselves on the back in congratulations for not being even worse than we have been seems pretty lame to me.
And finally, on our great virtue: capitalism.
Pascal wrote: 'Mine, thine. -- "This dog is mine," said those poor children; "that is my place in the sun." Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all the earth.'
Mine, thine--the philosophy of property. Capitalism isn't about virtue or the good. It might be sensible (but I have my doubts); it might be manageable (i really have my doubts); it might seems to work (for some very small minority of the world's population). But it has nothing to do with Christ. I don't remember any positive endorsements of the "free market" from him, in fact quite the opposite--[insert your own scripture references here].
-dan
6:36 pm
Phillip,
We need to be careful to distinguish between the natures of the two laws we are talking about.
True, Western law is indebted to a Judeo-Christian heritage, but democracy and republicanism themselves have their roots in the pagan classical Greek city-states, and American Democracy, for instance, was successful early on because the oligopoly af white men that drafted its founding documents and established its political structure thankfully had a profound belief in Virtue of the public servant, an ideal that was rooted in the political philosophy of the Roman orators. The Christianity that many of the American founders adhered to (most famously Thomas Jefferson) was Deism, which maintains a belief in the non-involvement of God within human affairs (a far cry from the Hebrew God who came to Moses in a thunerstorm on Mount Sinai).
The Law of Moses, by contrast, was the religious/political code given directly by God to the Hebrew people. Re-read the Pentateuch - there's a lot of the laws that are enshrined in the Law of Moses that we do not follow today (e.g., capital punishment for adultry and disobedient children; the kosher laws; etc.). Israel, at that time, was essentially a theocracy, not a democracy. Thus, it was ruled DIRECTLY BY GOD. That is, God was literally the monarch of Israel. Western democracies, by contrast, are governed (in theory) by their constituent peoples.
What is important to remember about a Judeo-Christian ethic is that it is not only Judeo, it is also Christian. Remember, Christ came and proclaimed (as was understood by the Jewish rabbis) that the two greatest commandments of the Mosaic Law were: "Love the lord your God with all of your being, and love your neighbor as yourslef." These frame the background of the Mosaic law.
The 10 Commandments are not necessarily the key to a free and open society. Muslim societies uphold the 10 Commandments far more consistently than do Western societies, and often far more cruelly. Many still live by the "eye-for-an-eye" mentality; many women have been killed for adultery or even for perceived adultery. In a way, this makes a lot of sense, because many aspects of Middle Eastern culture maintain similarities with the culture of the nomadic Hebrews. Both are, after all, pastoral semitic cultures.
Again, I would agree with Dan that the Western dominance of the world is based on violence and subjugation. Colonialiam is an evil blight on Western History, and even America, which doesn't have a history of overt colonialism, was one of the last Western democracies to abolish slavery. Christians were on both sides of the slavery debate, and both sides even used the Bible to support their stances on the issue.
It can be argued that, at least in America, democracy had a far more profound affect on Christianity than Christianity had on democracy (Mark Noll, Evangelical historical theologial at Wheaton University, wrote about this phenomenon in A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada; There's also a book entitled The Democratization of American Christianity, by Nathan O. Hatch, which is obviously written expressly about the subject).
In short, the essence of the Mosaic law is a valuable compass for our ethics and morals, but we should not think that the Law of Moses is the foundation for legislation and governance. It cannot be.
2:38 pm
P.S.
Phillip,
Thanks for bringing your perspective to this forum. I hope you don't feel that because so many postings are written in objection to your views that your views are not welcome. They are. I, personally, appreciate the mental sharpening that I must undergo in order to protest. Thank you for bringing diversity.
2:42 pm
as i read down the comments i desired so much to jump in. at this point, i could not say anything that wouldn't sound redundant. well said, dan and pedro.
3:27 pm
Phillip,
I would like to add that I think that the importance of the Judeo-Christian ethic is not how is might or should structure our society ou our government but how it shapes our personal morals and worldviews that will than dictate how we interact within society. John the Baptist's proclamation that the Kingdom is at hand was more about the personal call to follow Christ rather than an initial reordering of the political structure. After all, some of the apostles and many of Christ's disciples assumed that he had come to reestablish the Jewish state under the Mosaic paradigm. Christ, however turned their idea of "Kingdom" on its head. The kingdom is something that will, indeed, permeate the entire created order, but it begins with those individuals who are indwelt by the Spirit.
What I am advocating is that we understand the importance of the Judeo-Christian ethic as being bottom-up (in the true spirit of democracy) and not top-down. The significance of the Judeo-Christian ethic in our culture is not how the government applies it to its legislation but how we as Spirit-filled individuals emgage within society.
3:22 am
I do appreciate differing views to my own. As mentioned it provides us with something to digest.
This may be my last post. Only as part of a decision i have made to cut back my internet time. I have found in recent weeks that i am spending hours bouncing around the internet and cutting out time with people who need my time
So sorry to bail mid discussion.
My internet will hopefully consist of email, business and some ebay.
I do appreciate the thoughts raised and discussed on this blog however. I find that many blogs are never raised beyond a one or two sentence back slapping session. So well done on opening up intelligent discussion and drawing those who like to engage in it.
I will look for that C S Lewis book. For those interested i would recommend a read of Charles Finney's sytematic theology.
You would not agree with all he says but i think his thoughts on moral law and moral obligation are fantastic.
Thanks all for your openess.
5:30 pm
Phillip,
Kudos to you: I think your priorities are well in order. God's blessings in all you relationships.
1:31 pm
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