The Bible — Conservative or Liberal?
The United States of America is the largest and most influential state in the world in terms of meme-propagation and economic impact. It is that which makes us look on in awe, fascination, horror or incomprehension (in alphabetical order) as we look at the clashes of ideas that take place there.
One of them is the idea that somehow the Bible has been translated badly and no longer serves the people well. It must therefore be made more conservative, say some people. The odd thing is that the methods used seem to be the kind that conservatives often attribute to liberals (and vice versa) — a deliberate use of biased terms, an agenda that shapes the interpretation (see point 7 on making sure that the Bible expresses free-market ideas properly, for example!), and the idea that such interpretation will make people more open-minded.
This propagandism, witting or unwitting, is true of any two sides in an argument. Bound by our words, we have no choice but to be biased. Purely rational languages are stilted and inadequate; Wittgenstein and Russell both surrendered in the end, defeated by the fact that in the end, humans must communicate, whether or not language is used rationally.
And so, to the Bible. Is it conservative or liberal? I think the Bible mocks both sides just by existing. Abraham is a free-market warlord who liberally distributes wealth and lies about his wife; Jesus is an arch-conservative who says that not an iota of the Law will pass away, while the book of Acts notes that early Christians (following Jesus in Matthew 10) sold all they had, pooled their wealth and shared it out according to each one's need (proto-Marxism?).
A close reading of the Bible, attempting to apply the same rules throughout to everything it says, will result in a kind of revelation. The Bible is not about ideal humans, but about fallen humans. Noah is a drunk, Abraham a deceiver, Israel a liar, Moses a murderer, David a philanderer, Solomon a cynic.
It is not the rise of the Republican-styled elite (read Plato to understand what this means) nor the rise of the Democratic-styled masses that is the concern of this book. Rather, it is all about making your aim to lead a quiet and peaceable life, to pursue with excellence the work of your hands, and to live in moderation. The Bible asserts that this is only possible through a right relationship with God. Given any effective definition of God, this is self-evident.
The Bible transcends ideas like conservatism or liberalism simply because it is (in a sense) statistically honest. It makes both mundane and extraordinary claims, dishes the dirt out equally on saints and sinners, and is wise enough to deal in ambiguity and apparent contradiction. A book claiming to have the divine imprimatur but which didn't take into account the mutability of our world would be suspicious indeed.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the inerrant word of God. I believe not that it (as a text) doesn't contain errors of some sort (since manifestly anything in language must err by inaccuracy, imprecision, omission or false impression), but that it is inerrant just as an arrow that slays a man is inerrant. It doesn't matter how crude that arrow is as long as it fulfils its deadly task. No mere text can encompass reality or be the entire word of God.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the sufficient word of God. It is enough for anyone who reads it to come to any conclusion God might want that person to reach. This is why it is such a complex text. Imagine a textbook designed to teach any student anything that a teacher might want to teach. It would vary in style, form, content, terminology, approach, and many other ways as well.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the efficient word of God. I don't mean that it has a high output-over-input ratio, but that it has efficacy, that it has a high signal-to-noise ratio for what it is intended to do. True, many will say it is all noise and no signal, but that is true too of many things that are efficient, simply because what they are efficient at does not meet the specific need of the critic concerned.
I am aware that logic is often seen as the enemy of faith. I believe, however, that faith has a definite logic. In fact, faith is necessary for belief in any system that serves us rationally and/or reasonably. You can't do science, for example, without the belief that your intellectual cognition is related to perception is related to reality; you have to believe that the noumenon (the thing-of-the-mind) and the phenomenon (the thing-of-the-world) have some connection, even though there is no necessary link between them.
The Bible, for me, is a bridge of faith. As a rational being, I recognize that it doesn't contain specific answers to everything — what book could? But as an epistemological being, I recognize that there is truth in it, of a rather penetrating, definitive and assiduous kind.
One of them is the idea that somehow the Bible has been translated badly and no longer serves the people well. It must therefore be made more conservative, say some people. The odd thing is that the methods used seem to be the kind that conservatives often attribute to liberals (and vice versa) — a deliberate use of biased terms, an agenda that shapes the interpretation (see point 7 on making sure that the Bible expresses free-market ideas properly, for example!), and the idea that such interpretation will make people more open-minded.
This propagandism, witting or unwitting, is true of any two sides in an argument. Bound by our words, we have no choice but to be biased. Purely rational languages are stilted and inadequate; Wittgenstein and Russell both surrendered in the end, defeated by the fact that in the end, humans must communicate, whether or not language is used rationally.
And so, to the Bible. Is it conservative or liberal? I think the Bible mocks both sides just by existing. Abraham is a free-market warlord who liberally distributes wealth and lies about his wife; Jesus is an arch-conservative who says that not an iota of the Law will pass away, while the book of Acts notes that early Christians (following Jesus in Matthew 10) sold all they had, pooled their wealth and shared it out according to each one's need (proto-Marxism?).
A close reading of the Bible, attempting to apply the same rules throughout to everything it says, will result in a kind of revelation. The Bible is not about ideal humans, but about fallen humans. Noah is a drunk, Abraham a deceiver, Israel a liar, Moses a murderer, David a philanderer, Solomon a cynic.
It is not the rise of the Republican-styled elite (read Plato to understand what this means) nor the rise of the Democratic-styled masses that is the concern of this book. Rather, it is all about making your aim to lead a quiet and peaceable life, to pursue with excellence the work of your hands, and to live in moderation. The Bible asserts that this is only possible through a right relationship with God. Given any effective definition of God, this is self-evident.
The Bible transcends ideas like conservatism or liberalism simply because it is (in a sense) statistically honest. It makes both mundane and extraordinary claims, dishes the dirt out equally on saints and sinners, and is wise enough to deal in ambiguity and apparent contradiction. A book claiming to have the divine imprimatur but which didn't take into account the mutability of our world would be suspicious indeed.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the inerrant word of God. I believe not that it (as a text) doesn't contain errors of some sort (since manifestly anything in language must err by inaccuracy, imprecision, omission or false impression), but that it is inerrant just as an arrow that slays a man is inerrant. It doesn't matter how crude that arrow is as long as it fulfils its deadly task. No mere text can encompass reality or be the entire word of God.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the sufficient word of God. It is enough for anyone who reads it to come to any conclusion God might want that person to reach. This is why it is such a complex text. Imagine a textbook designed to teach any student anything that a teacher might want to teach. It would vary in style, form, content, terminology, approach, and many other ways as well.
What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the efficient word of God. I don't mean that it has a high output-over-input ratio, but that it has efficacy, that it has a high signal-to-noise ratio for what it is intended to do. True, many will say it is all noise and no signal, but that is true too of many things that are efficient, simply because what they are efficient at does not meet the specific need of the critic concerned.
I am aware that logic is often seen as the enemy of faith. I believe, however, that faith has a definite logic. In fact, faith is necessary for belief in any system that serves us rationally and/or reasonably. You can't do science, for example, without the belief that your intellectual cognition is related to perception is related to reality; you have to believe that the noumenon (the thing-of-the-mind) and the phenomenon (the thing-of-the-world) have some connection, even though there is no necessary link between them.
The Bible, for me, is a bridge of faith. As a rational being, I recognize that it doesn't contain specific answers to everything — what book could? But as an epistemological being, I recognize that there is truth in it, of a rather penetrating, definitive and assiduous kind.
Labels: Bible, Epistemology, Logic, Reason
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