Monastic Mumblings on Job

Ancient Religion

This morning during my Office, I was reading Job 29:1-20.

Some scholars feel that Job is the oldest book in the Sacred Scriptures, perhaps written before Moses (pre 1500 B.C.). Others put it at the time of Solomon (ca. 900 B.C.), and some even as late as the Babylonian Exile or later (post 600 B.C.).

Whenever it was written, this morning I saw an interesting insight into the heart of God. In this book, as far back in time as it is, Job boasts of his Faith, in verses 12-13 he tells us what God expects of His followers:

I delivered the poor who cried, and the orphan who had no helper. The blessing of the wretched came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I championed the cause of the stranger.

There you have it, the Message. The Ancient Faith that God has been speaking to fallen humanity for thousands of years. You see it throughout the Scriptures from the Hebrew prophets to Paul, James and of course the Lord, Jesus. Does the modern American Church hear it, or is it seduced by wealth and worldly power?

September 12, 2006 | Permalink

Part II Slacktivist : Niebuhr & Human

Sep 15, 2006

Human readers

(One last thing on Niebuhr, then we'll move on, I promise.)

Reinhold Niebuhr is regarded as a "Neo-Orthodox" theologian. The "neo" there doesn't mean that he presented a new orthodoxy, but refers rather to the way that his profound consideration of sin and human nature was a reassertion of the classic biblical and Augustinian views.

On a lot of other matters, however, Niebuhr was anything but orthodox.* He did not believe in the resurrection -- of Christ or of anyone else. He believed that Jesus was divine only in the most nebulous sense.

Niebuhr was, in other words, deeply orthodox on the subject of human nature and seriously heterodox on the subject of the divine. This latter heterodoxy explains why Niebuhr is out of favor with contemporary evangelical Christians.** Evangelicals ought to be more charitable to old Reinhold, however, since they tend to suffer from a mirror-image of his problem.

Evangelicals tend to be, in other words, deeply orthodox on the subject of the divine and seriously heterodox on the subject of human nature.

Consider evangelical hermeneutics and the epistemology that underlies them. Try to reconcile this objective certainty with the Christian belief that human beings are finite, fallible and fallen. It cannot be done. Evangelicals may nominally believe this is our state, but as soon as we pick up a Bible and begin to read they believe we turn into clear-eyed, pure-hearted, omniscient readers.

Hence the evangelical obsession with declarations of the "inerrancy" or "infalibility" of the text. I am in no position to say whether or not such declarations are true. None of us is. As errant, fallible humans we cannot judge whether or not a text is inerrant and infallible. But even if we take it on faith that the text is all that they say it is, we're still no better off because we cannot supply this perfect text with perfect readers, or with a reading that is "inerrant" or "infallible."

It may be that the text is as they say, inerrant and infallible. But this means little more than Archimedes' claim about the lever. "Give me a place to stand and lever long enough and I will move the world," Archimedes said. And he was right -- except that he didn't have a lever long enough, and that there was no place to stand, and that even if there were no human could survive to stand there.

The evangelical claims of inerrancy and infallibility, likewise, offer no place for humans to stand, no place from which human readers could approach or understand their inhuman text.

What we claim about the text cannot trump what we know about ourselves. We are finite, fallible and fallen. (And far too full of preconception and misconception to ever claim our reading of scripture is sola scriptura.) Certainty is a divine prerogative, not a human one.***

This doesn't mean that nothing is knowable, or that all readings of the text are equally valid, or any other such nonsense. But it does mean that evangelicals ought to approach scripture with a bit more, yes, Niebuhrian humility. To do otherwise is to abandon the orthodox Christian view of human nature.

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* I realize that words like "orthodox" can be difficult to use in a pluralistic context. Please don't misunderstand. When I say that Niebuhr's views on the resurrection and the divinity of Christ are not the same as orthodox Christian views, I am merely being descriptive. I am not advocating the burning of heretics. I'm not even arguing here that Niebuhr's heterodox views are wrong. (I happen to think they were wrong, but that is a separate matter.) The truth or falsity of his views are not the point here -- the point is that his views were something other than what Christians believe.

This phrase -- "what Christians believe" -- is of course also problematic. It's use and misuse as a phrase of judgment muddles its descriptive use. But that descriptive use is unavoidable and necessary. For the word "Christian" (or "Hindu," "Moslem," "Scientologist," "Cubs fan" or "Trekkie") to mean anything it needs to refer to a particular group of people and not to others. If such names and classifications did not make such distinctions, then we wouldn't need them, we could call everything by the same name. It is obviously often necessary to make such distinctions without also making judgments or implying hierarchies between groups of people, but such judgments have become so much a part of our culture that even these necessary and obviously nonjudgmental distinctions can be difficult to make without resort to exhausting lawyerly footnotes like this one.

** This and the fact that he doesn't have a program on Christian radio or cable television.

*** This is why many of our oldest stories -- including some of those told in the Bible -- involve the human misinterpretation of the divine word. There's a reason that the word "oracular" means "obscure, enigmatic."

Only human

"Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa."
-- Bob Veale

Some interesting discussion recently in comments about human nature, specifically around the perennial question: Are people basically good?

That's a perennial question, but perhaps not a very helpful one.

The answer we Christians give is "Yes." And also "No."

The Yes part has to do, in part, with the "imago Dei" -- the image of God. Each and every person, we believe, is created in the image of God. This spark of the divine is a permanent and essential component of our humanity and can never be wholly extinguished. (It also has to do with our place as the objects of God's love -- meaning that if you want to argue that people aren't worth a damn, you'll have to take that argument up with God.)

Yet our fallen state is also essential. This Christian belief is conveyed in two doctrines that, unfortunately, bear rather misleading names: "original sin" and "total depravity." The idea of original sin is that sin is actually anything but original. And total depravity sounds more like a description of the mutants in "Resident Evil" than like most humans. A more accurate name might be something like "totally pervasive depravity" -- the idea being not that we are wholly corrupt, but that every part of us, every aspect, is in some way less than whole (this is especially important in contrast to dualistic philosophies that view our souls as holy and our bodies as evil -- such as Augustine's never-quite-shed neo-Platonism, which led him to twist original sin into something having to do with sex, a literally perverse idea that continues to screw up a lot of Christian thinking about sex and sin and human nature).

But you needn't agree with any of that to appreciate the wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr's chastened, humble, "change the things I can" approach to human nature, politics and international relations.

Bracket for the moment any idea of sin, any question as to whether or not there is something inherently wicked in human nature, and consider only the better angels of our nature.

We're still human -- which is to say we're finite and fallible. We're smallish and parochial. We don't live very long. We don't and can't know everything. Our perspective is always limited by our inability to be in more than one place at a time, one time at a time. And even when we have all the knowledge we can get -- on those rare occasions when we're able even to know that we have all the knowledge we can get -- and our intentions are as pure as can be, we still tend, quite often, to botch things up through simple, nonmalicious, human error.

All of which recommends Niebuhr's cautious, prudent approach.

I had dinner once with a botanist who specialized in remedying the damage caused by exotic invasive species. Many of these species had been imported deliberately, with the best of intentions, only to find that certain variables had not been accounted for, certain consequences had not been foreseen, leading to disastrous results.

The botanist was coping with a particularly pernicious invasive species, the melaluca trees choking out native species in the Florida Everglades. Something had to be done and the botanist had a plan. He wanted to import a voracious species of beetle and unleash it in the Everglades. This benevolent invader, he was certain, would feed only on the melalucas, dying away after it had cleansed the area of its exotic food supply and thus having no further long-term effect on the native ecosystem.

I wished him the best and I hope that those overseeing this effort really have accounted for every possible variable and foreseen every possible consequence, as he assured me they had. But I maintain a Niebuhrian skepticism about the project.

Niebuhr's modest view of human nature led him to favor limited government. He did not believe that human virtue was ever sufficient as a check to power, so he insisted that power also be limited by power, by checks and balances.*

But even if you have a more optimistic assessment of human virtue than that offered by Niebuhr's neo-Orthodoxy you can perhaps agree that our limited, human knowledge and wisdom also suggest the need for limits on the power of government as well as a chastened view of the prospects for revolution.

All of this -- his insistence on limited government, his suspicion of revolution, his extreme caution in international relations, his "realist" rejection of pacifism -- might make Niebuhr sound like an utter conservative, "a reactionary humbug ... who does not wish to endanger the status quo."

But Niebuhr's desire to "accept the things I cannot change" is only part of his prayer, only part of his theology. He also insists that having the courage to change the things we can is an imperative, a duty. For Niebuhr, progress is a necessity, an obligation, even something of an inevitability.

Look again at that famous prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Niebuhr's hopes for progress were modest, but he was certainly no defender of the status quo.

For the theological consideration of human nature, I think Reinhold Niebuhr is unparalleled. Yet I remain, overall, less pessimistic and more hopeful than he was about the prospects for progress. This is not because I disagree with his perspective on human nature, but because I disagree with his perspective regarding the other half of what theologians study -- the nature of God. Or, as one of his former students put it:

[Niebuhr's] pessimism concerning human nature was not balanced by an optimism concerning divine nature.

That former student was Martin Luther King Jr., whose "optimism concerning divine nature" was not an abstraction. He put it to the test in the only laboratory theologians have.

(More of King on Niebuhr from A People So Bold!)

From 'The Old Bill'

Cynewulf's list of gifts

Interesting how in every age and context we perceive the gifts of the Spirit differently, certain things stand out, other stuff fades. In the late 8th or early 9th centuries the ability to write or navigate a boat got in there. Neither made any of Paul's lists. But Cynewulf included them. Here's a bit that Cyn wrote:

The earth-creator, God’s Spirit-son, honours us and gives us gifts - permanent seats among the high angels. He gives diverse wisdom and places it in human hearts. Through His own breath/spirit, He gives some the ability to speak wisely, with noble insights – such can sing richly and speak of many things, for wisdom resides in their hearts
Some can bring to life the sound of the harp in the face of warriors, clearly sounding each note.
Others can correctly teach divine law
Some can expound the mysteries of the stars and the wide universe,
Some can skillfully write the spoken word,
Some can boldly urge their ships forward over the salty sea, amid the raging waves.
Others can climb steep and lofty trees,
Some can make weapons, temper swords,
While others know the paths across the great plains, the distant lands.
This is how the Lord, the Son of God, dispenses his gifts on the earth.