Reductio Absurdium
The Audience Not Dumb
A major issue with religious fundamentalism is that it reduces faith and the experience of faith. This reduction creates propositional ideology that is often at odds with the very religion that fundamentalism claims to be protecting. Sure, it usually sounds like a good idea. “If we can just make sure that everyone believes these things then we’ll keep the faith.” Or even a listicle style thought. “10 Tricks to Stay Faithful, Number 7 Will Blow Your Mind.” It’s absurd to reduce religion to propositions. But it is oh so popular. There has been a streak of fundamentalist thought within the Church of the Nazarene (COTN) for a very long time. The majority tend to keep it at bay, but we are in the midst of a resurgence of fundamentalism driven by fear and a misunderstanding of what is happening to Christianity in the United States. There are sectarian groups and clergy within the COTN, but they have been mainly on the fringe. They form partnerships, bring resolutions, and tut tut at the “progressives.” Back in 2012, the COTN published an excellent book to explain who were are historically as Wesleyans and how that is counter to fundamentalism. That book is entitled Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Are Not Fundamentalists. It’s an excellent book that walks through our traditional understanding of scripture and how our understanding of it and God are counter to fundamentalism’s reductions.
Which is why it is strange to see our flagship denominational magazine, Holiness Today feature a board member of a sectarian group and his fundamentalist vision of scripture. From the two clips of a video they have shown, I can get a pretty good idea of where we are going. It sounds very much like the book The ARTwork of God: Accurate, Reliable, and True: Embracing the Bible Through the Eyes of Jesus which sounds good, but the authors are actually making an argument for complete textual inerrancy and a certain literal reading of the Hebrew scriptures. I heartily agree that we should not go walking around in the Old Testament without Jesus (as Brian Zahnd says). But that doesn’t mean we can see Jesus in all things or that Jesus’ words make scripture something it is not. I reviewed ARTWork and I will link that below, but I find a grand irony in the fact that an ordained Elder in the COTN wrote a book that argues against our Article of Faith of scripture. Yes, he tries to get around that with a word game of making all of scripture relevant for salvation.
The first video shared has a member of clergy make the suggestion that we not use “stories” to describe the early books of the Bible, but instead use accounts. (He puts air quotes around stories). His argument is that the word story makes people think of fairy tales, myths, or made up things. That’s true and it is also true that story and account are two very different things. But story is so much more than an account. Story does carry myth, meaning, invitation, and truth. An account has to stick to the facts and squeezes truth into a fact box. Truth doesn’t fit in those. The funny thing is that in the second video teaser shared, we get a theological turn known as Christophany in which we look at pre-incarnation manifestations of God in the Hebrew scriptures as prefigures, or literal appearances of Jesus. These usually stick to physical manifestations and traditionally Christophanies are not recognized in Genesis 1-3. I don’t know for sure as the whole video is not out until March 1st, but the second teaser implies that this idea is carried throughout the Hebrew scriptures.
Christophanies, when extended beyond the traditional assumption of physical manifestation, are easily turned into eisegesis. It is easy to place Jesus where he does not appear when you start playing loose with the interpretive idea of Christophany. A key to understanding the idea of Jesus in the creations stories specifically is to understand that when the Gospel of John opens with “In the beginning was the Word (Logos)” it is a new interpretation of the cosmology of creation. Like much of the New Testament use of Hebrew scripture, the Gospels reinterpret scriptures in light of Jesus. Hebrews 1 is a good way to see why.
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1-4 NRSVue)
There is a bit of irony in saying we should use the word account and then start sticking Jesus in everywhere. You see story is the idea when we expand the words of scripture and see a theological truth not present explicitly. This is a form of progressive revelation. We look back to earlier texts with the eyes of knowing Jesus. The deep truth is that God has never not been like Jesus. Therefore, we need to read texts before Jesus in light of the life of Jesus.
The Problem with reduction
But the larger problem is the reasoning behind the premise of using the term account. I believe it assumes that people are too stupid to understand what we mean when we say story in light of scripture. Reducing scripture to accounts, reduces the truth and the grandness of God’s relationship with creation. If we are going to use account, then how do we deal with the two different accounts of creation in Genesis. If they are only accounts, then we need to deal with the different accounts of order and method. But of we see them as origination stories we can see the truths without bogging ourselves down in the weeds of factual arguments. What of we see the stories as part of the larger ongoing story of God. What if we look back at the story of the man and the woman and see ourselves as part of the story of God working in creation. This is an invitation to see that we are in the story and become willing participants when we trust God.
Thinking we need to use words like account comes from the fear that people won’t understand the depth and weight of the word story. The people in the pews, in Sunday School classrooms, and in small groups are not dumb. They can grasp the idea of story and what it means to tell the story of God and God’s people. One of our failures of discipleship is not challenging people with the harder ideas of scripture and faith. Because story is powerful - way more powerful than account. Stories take us beyond the facts of something into the who and the why. Those are much better things to learn. An illustration from the Lord of the Rings might be helpful here. Sam Gamgee is realizing that he and Frodo are part of a larger story that has been ongoing for millennia.
‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Sam. ‘And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?’ ‘I wonder,’ said Frodo. ‘But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.’ (LOTR)
We are part of a larger story. We look back to Genesis for the who and the why knowing that the how is not important. When we challenge ourselves and those we pastor to enter into this story, we experience a flourishing in grace. That doesn’t mean that we are always OK. But it does mean that we see purpose in our lives as part of the grand story of God. We are invited again and again to see the move of God among us. The God who draws and woos us into relational holiness also invites us to tell our own stories. Communities, nations, churches are defined by the stories they tell. When we tell our stories, we live out the truth of those stories. I can tell you an account of my wife, but that doesn’t tell you who she is or what she means to me. Why would we limit God to accounts?
When we reduce the grand stories of God to accounts, we stick a rusty and dull knife through the heart of living scripture. We turn the purpose of scripture into a dusty old list of accounts rather than a living God-breathed invitation to join the story of God. I don’t get it. Our shared Wesleyan-Holiness tradition has so much to offer a broken and hurting world. When we lop off our historical understanding of scripture and try to jam it into a fundamentalist box, we become something we are not. The Southern Baptist Convention is a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for success. Accounts don’t transform, but stories transcend into invitation to transformation. Stories allow us to enter into them and experience their truth anew each time we hear or tell them.
Insisting on making the grand stories of scripture into accounts blinds us to the possibility of entering stories. It also excludes reason and history. If we are speaking of creation specifically, Eric Vail has an excellent comment on science and faith in the Wesleyan Theology Series Book Creation:
Whether the sciences are speaking about the unfolding of the universe over billions of years or the unfolding of life on Earth, the biblical imagination about creation’s unfolding is valid. God’s activity is necessary for any of it to be possible, God has purposes for creation’s function, and every component has an active role to play. Biblical theology can comfortably dialogue with theories of the big bang, quantum mechanics, and evolutionary biology.
The limitations put upon the imagination of scripture through the shackles of fundamentalism is both sad and not needed. Orthodoxy is not reduced to the absurdity of propositional facts. No, orthodoxy is the shared invitation to know God, to truly enter into the Story of God. When we reduce, we show a mistrust of the Holy Spirit and of God’s move in the world. We need to be telling more stories, not fewer. We need to engage the imagination of generations yearning for beauty and truth in a violent and demanding world. We need to set scripture free to transform our hearts.
To paraphrase Kendrick Lamar:
The audience not dumb
Shape the stories how you want, hey, Andy, they’re not slow
* They typically label normal Wesleyan-Holiness folk as progressive because of the official understanding of scripture in the COTN and for believing in a concern for social justice codified in our Manual
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord Of The Rings (pp. 711-712)
Vail Eric. Creation. 1st ed. The Foundry Publishing