One thing I find rather intriguing about reading William Penn is just how much more seriously people in his day took studying the Bible and its origins. He was a very knowledgeable man on those points, and a chapter I've been reading of late makes some very telling points against 21st century fundamentalist nuts.
Quakers, in those early years, were frequently attacked by other English denominations for regarding the Holy Spirit to be paramount over written Scripture. Penn counters that knowledge of the Bible's creation supports this idea, for a number of quite logical reasons.
One: The Bible was written over a period of hundreds of years. Therefore it is not a single revelation of God, but many.
Two: Different versions of various books known in Penn's time to exist or to have existed show such marked variation that it becomes clear that no one version can be declared superior to the others with any great certainty.
Three: The versions that are now commonly regarded as the infallible text were selected in various Catholic Church councils in the thousand years or so after these variations and books were written. In essence, the Bible as we (and as Penn's contemporaries) know it is the product of much human interpretation and selection, often motivated by political aim. Many books that are not inherently wrong or inferior to others were simply cast aside, and are now regarded as apocrypha rather than the "true" word of God (and the irony of his fellow Protestants defending the Catholic Church's decisions of inclusion and exclusion is certainly not lost on Penn). Yet all of this is the product of human activity, not of God's decrees. As such, we can not be truly sure that these selections and interpretations were infallible.
Four: From the texts of existing New Testament gospels, it is suggested that there were in fact several more gospels written, eye witness accounts of Jesus and his work. Yet we are left with only a handful. If the words of the ones we do have are to be accepted, then it would seem that many other gospels are missing, and not present in our current Bible. If this is indeed the case, then the Bible is also an incomplete and therefore imperfect record...
Something else which Penn points out in the course of discussing the Holy Spirit versus Scripture--many of Christ's teachings were in fact being advocated hundreds of years earlier by Socrates, Pythagoras, and many others. To Penn, this suggests that the Holy Spirit was properly in these people as well, tough Christ had not yet come--they knew the law inside their hearts, without a written record of it yet existing.
Myself, I can't help but wonder if it mightn't also be possible that, given that the Greeks and followers of Greek philosophy were among the earliest converts to Christianity, the words of these ancient sages were taken into account when the time came to put down in writing what Jesus said. Perhaps these philosophers' constant injunctions to "Love thy neighbor"--which appears quite frequently--were the actual source for that rule, that the historical Jesus said something similar, and so to attract new converts, the words of those earlier Greeks were placed in the Bible. Not saying that they didn't reflect the same point as what Jesus did say, but it seems altogether possible to me that the wording might have been borrowed to aid conversion purposes. Or, it's entirely possible that it happened just as Penn says--that they were simply led to the same conclusions by the piece of Holy Spirit within them, as it is in all of them. I'd like to think so. There's really no way to know, though.
It's refreshing to find a devout Christian who's willing to actually examine the origins of the Bible and admit to the reality of its construction and consequent imperfection. True, it might be the creation of human beings, led by divine inspiration. But it is nevertheless a human creation, and therefore always to be suspected of fallibility. Given the presence of similar laws and customers among the Gentiles prior to conversion, Penn says something which I think sums the whole thing up nicely: the Scriptures are a rule for faith and practice; they are not the rule. It is possible to follow the Light at least in some measure without them. They have their uses, but ultimately, they are not complete and perfect. The Holy Spirit is, however--a point brought up again and again by Jesus and the Apostles. It is the law written on the heart, not the law written on paper.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Okay. I agree that you don't need to have the canonized Bible in your hands to attain salvation or to know God -- there are too many people who live their lives without its availability (or without literacy) for me to think that.
And the Bible itself actually says something about this -- I think it's Romans where Paul talks about the law being written on everyone's hearts (whether they obey it or not).
The Word, logos, in the Bible isn't referring to the book itself (at least I don't think so), but to Christ -- the immanent nature of God. That's the important part, and that's why I don't think there's one "correct" translation (because, for us, they're all translations, not reading ancient Hebrew or Greek).
But I do think that, while the Bible is a sort of "collection" of different revelations (different in time, not content, I'd argue), I think that I trust God enough to guide the process and make sure that what's important is there. My impression of the extra-Biblical gospels of Jesus is that the "good" parts are redundant, and the other parts are at times sort of crazy. By which I mean not, "Wow, isn't it crazy that God was made manifest in flesh?" but "What's this business about Mary Magdalene needing to become a man to be saved? How does that make any sense with anything else in the Bible at all? And how does it even make sense on its own?"
As far as the gospels themselves (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) being eye-witness accounts, they weren't. The letters of Paul precede all of them -- which is why it's so laughable that people often look to the gospels for a more "pure" version of Christianity and rant about how Paul "changed" Christianity (because if he had radically changed it, there would have been substantial argument against his accounts and interpretations of Jesus' teachings and life).
And, to the extent that this has to do with Gnosticism, my main problem with that (besides blasphemy) has always been its emphasis on accumulating knowledge. Jesus (by contrast) wasn't a snob -- salvation requires no education. If anything, the opposite is true -- like the injunction to be like children in our faith (which may have less to do with innocence and more to do with incompetence, as my pastor in Vermont once said).
Oh, i agree with most of that. Regarding eye witness accounts, I guess the thing to keep in mind is that in Penn's time, that's what everyone in Europe assumed them to be. Maybe not everyone, but pretty much...I guess the point there is really just that the account we have differ in some matters that seem important, and that there might have been other accounts which differed in the same ways, which would then lead us to have to question which was more correct...
Also ,thank you for being willing to accept the fact that these weren't written in the order tradition says they were...I had a long argument yesterday with a relative and ultimately that's what a lot of it boiled down to, is that he takes it as completely 100% eye witness accounts and everything...
The frustrating thing, too, about yesterday's debate (also relevant here) is that, if you look at The Bible for examples, the Old testament especially, there are a lot of places where people err and go astray from what God actually wants (or can be assumed to want, for consistency's sake) and there is no retribution. People are allowed to make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes, and He waits a while before smacking them down. So why is it far-fetched to thing the Church councils could have been the same?
i'm not sure there's necessarily a strong connection between Quaker theology and Gnosticism, though.
Here's a question for you, hop, since this was actually the crux of yesterday's argument--baptism: what is it, and how important is it?
i'm not sure there's necessarily a strong connection between Quaker theology and Gnosticism, though.
I don't think there is -- I was talking about the non-canonical gospels, since I know you are (or have been) interested in them.
Baptism is conventionally (and I say this growing up in anti-infant baptism church, and being theologically closer to anabaptism than anything else) "an outward sign of an inward change." Others (like Catholics) obviously feel differently, but I personally don't agree with the idea of infant baptism.
-Heather
Here's my issue with baptism ,sort of alongside the infant baptism issue, which bothers me fof the same reasons it does you. I know some people who say baptism "couldn't hurt." I know an equal number of people who consider it absolutely vital, perhaps even more important than other considerations. If you follow that line of thought, the end result disturbs me. You could arguably bew a saint on Earth, feed and shelter the needy, minister to the sick, give all your available time and money to aiding the sick, poor, and under privileged, treating everyone as you would like to be treated, loving thy neighbor--in short, doing all the thingsa a good Christian ought--and die unbaptized. If one holds that baptism is absolutely essential, then this person, virtuous as they may be, will not get into Heaven. Meanwhile, someone else who lives a sort of half-assed Christian life, doing some good but not really putting that much efforrt into it, yet is baptized, would get in. Simply because someone dunked them into some water. If that's really how thge club works, I don't think I'd want to join anyway...
Post a Comment