The Problem of Literalism Part 6: Conclusion

For these several months we have discussed the problem of literalism, which is essentially that there are two almost opposite uses of the idea of literalism. For Augustine literalism meant attempting to understand the intent of the author and the historical reality expressed in the text. For Spinoza literalism meant attacking the very possibility of revelation. We also discussed that the “rationalizing” of religion around a philosophical or scientific consensus was an ancient project reinvigorated by Spinoza’s work. Having considered all of these pieces, let’s draw them all together to consider how the church should respond to the current state of affairs.

I have an obscure book called Spinoza Dictionary, published by a small press called the Philosophical Library. It’s not a terribly interesting book, but it has a short foreword by Albert Einstein. Here we learn that Einstein “read the Spinoza Dictionary with great care” and that he had obviously read Spinoza’s canon with greater care. He makes a gentle jibe reminding the astute reader to read Spinoza’s works, establishes himself as an interpreter of Spinoza, and mocks sin and the soul and closes. Perhaps, one of the greatest scientific minds in history flashes his philosophical membership card, hides it a way with a smile, and goes back to his physics.

The other day as I sat on the train returning from Washington, DC, the man behind me was loudly counseling his reluctant friend over a cell phone about the need to despoil his new girlfriend. The basic argument was that human beings are essentially animals, and as animals we have sexual needs; if these sexual needs are not fulfilled, we can break down in rage. If the girlfriend refused to submit to his needs, then she was unnatural or likely cheating on him. And thus, we find materialistic philosophy or Epicureanism disseminated throughout our culture at all levels.

Street or train ethics is a conglomeration of Darwin and Nietzsche with a bit of social accommodation on the side.  The poets thump out rhymes confirming this, the writers and actors support it, the academics and philosophers chatter about it, and our media spreads it. Darwin’s contribution to materialism is so common that a man on the train can publicly proclaim without any sense of shame that we are all animals and we need regular sex so that we don’t become rapists.

For better or worse, we live in an age enframed by Epicurean thought with its intrinsic hermeneutic 1. Shedd summarizes our current state well: “Epicureanism is the most natural and spontaneous philosophical scheme for earthly minds, and hence prevails in those periods when the fallen humanity runs it career with greatest swiftness, and with least resistance, from religion, or from the better philosophical systems” [A History of Christian Doctrine (reprint 2006, Solid Ground Christian Books; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), 61].

Epicureanism crept into public awareness with the advent of the printing press and the dissemination of materialistic philosophers and theologians like Socinus, Servetus, and Machiavelli. Any careful reading of Luther’s Bondage of the Will or Calvin’s Institutes will prove that they were enormously concerned about the rising materialism. Calvin goes as far as to call the ancient Epicurean Lucretius “a filthy dog” (cf. Institutes, 1.5.5). The puritan John Howe’s (1630-1705) The Living Temple was a careful defense of orthodoxy and an attack on the materialism of Spinoza. Yet even given the efforts of such men, the materialists swept the board and became the framework of modernity.

Spinoza’s modern contribution was laying out the philosophical and practical strategy necessary to maintain materialism in response to divine revelation (cf. Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion). One component of this strategy was his corrosive literalism. The Theological-Political Treatise exhibits one of the basic problems of philosophical materialism for Christians. If there is no God or only a philosophically necessary god, then the Bible is open to all the vagaries and fortunes of history in its development and content. The human authors can hold to contradictory beliefs, opinions, and error. The interpreter who approaches the text with Spinoza’s literalism must develop materialistic explanations of the Bible, creating new interpretations and significances from the text in contradiction to the universal faith.

The second issue which is directly related to the interpretation of the Bible is that the Bible teaches a universal history that contradicts the universal history developed by the Epicureans from their presupposition of materialism. The general framework of their history was recorded (circa 50 BC) by Lucretius in On the Nature of Things. In our time the necessary physical uniformity and material causes are accepted as fact and then read back as billions and billions of years and an evolutionary biological process. Occasionally, an Einstein or Sagan (cf. Broca’s Brian) will briefly mention or admit to the philosophical commitments of Epicureanism, but then quickly move to the rhetoric of fact and science.

With the historical rise of Epicureanism as the horizons of Western culture, Christianity has been forced to respond to the incompatibility. One group, led by the likes of Schleiermacher, attempted to carve out a place for Christianity within the system (cf. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers). Others attempted to lead the church into raw and inconsistent forms of fideism and provincial theology. Some attempted to maintain the older and more Augustinian understanding, but were willing to compromise on the integrity of the Scriptures and the historical literalism of the church—A. H. Strong (1836-1921) will serve as an example. And an even smaller group led by the likes of Shedd attempted to maintain the historical interpretation of the church in theological and academic circles.

Schleiermacher’s attempt led to the rise of Christian liberalism, but the mediating position of men like A. H. Strong created another problem, which can be illuminated from a quote by his systematic theology: [W]e would premise that we do not hold this or any future scheme of reconciling Genesis and geology to be a finality. Such a settlement of all questions involved would presuppose not only a perfected science of the physical universe, but also a perfected science of hermeneutics. It is enough if we can offer tentative solutions which represent the present state of thought upon the subject. Remembering, then, that any such scheme of reconciliation may speedily be outgrown without prejudice to the truth of the Scripture narrative, we present the following as an approximate account of the coincidences between the Mosaic and the geological records,” [Systematic Theology (New Jersey: Felming H. Revell Company, 1907), 395.]

Strong’s position is that the interpretation of the Bible, especially the sections on creation, should now be driven by current scientific consensus on the universal history.  In so doing, he and those who follow his lead break decisively with Augustine’s historical literalism. What is being ignored is the philosophical assumptions of physical uniformity and ultimate material causes serve as the philosophical framework supporting and driving the science of geology. In other words, Spinoza’s literalism is contained within the scientific project as conceptualized by modernity. To accept the universal history of western science as normative is to accept physical uniformity and an ultimate physical cause rather than a divine cause. The current scientific regime will not allow for universally catastrophic events like the Fall or the Flood or breaks in the physical chains of causation caused by miracles. Individual theologians may maintain a historical orthodoxy, but if they consistently hold to physical uniformity, passage after passage must be reinterpreted along Spinoza’s literalism. The journey from  Darwin’s old earth and modern cosmology, to a local flood, the manna of Exodus as bug spittle (R. Alan Cole, Exodus, at 16:31), Jesus walking on a sand bar, Jesus swooning on the cross, and the Bible as myth or fable, is one of simple hermeneutical consistency.

So if syncretism and compromise with the universal history and materialistic literalism lead to capitulation and the end of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), what do we do? We pray, we remain loyal to Christ and his word and the faith, and we fight.

How do we fight? A bit like this: “You must also know, that whatever Being is not of it self, hath no Excellency in it, but what was in that Being that was of it self before. And therefore, it had in it, all the Excellency that is in such things as proceeded from it (unabated because in it necessarily) together with the proper Excellency of its own Being, whereas the other sort of Beings, have but their own deriv’d Excellency only. Wherefore this, also, is most evident, that, this World had a Maker distinct from, and more excellent than it self, that changes not, and whereto that Name most properly agrees, I AM THAT I AM” [John Howe, The Living Temple: Part II; Containing Animadversions on Spinosa (reprint: Gale Ecco, 2011; London, Thomas Parkhurst, 1702), 87].

And this: “But such agile motions of the soul, such excellent faculties, such rare gifts, especially bear upon the fact of them a divinity that does not allow itself readily to be hidden—unless the Epicureans, like the Cyclopes, should from this height all the more shamelessly wage war against God. Do all the treasures of heavenly wisdom concur in ruling a five-foot worm while the whole universe lacks this privilege?” [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 1960), 1.5.5, 56.]

In these quotes by Howe and Calvin, Christian philosophy stands upon the bedrock of revelation and offers resistance. They say in effect, “Come let us reason together; explain to me this.” They offer to fight, and to the best of their ability they do so.

And yet our friend Augustine reminds us that it is not always so easy:

When they are able, from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture. But when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, whether we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. And we will so cling to our Mediator, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that we will not be lead astray by the glib talk of false philosophy or frightened by the superstition of false religion. [The Literal Meaning of Genesis in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 41 (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 1.21.45].

We must then be prepared to fall back, not to mysticism or provincial fideism which is the foundation of so much fearful ignorance and heterodoxy among Christians, but the puzzled and robust faith taught to us by Paul and preserved by men like Augustine, Anselm, Luther, and the rest. The blessed Paul describes it this way: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair. . .” What does it mean to be perplexed? It means that Paul sometimes didn’t know the right answer or the explanation. He was at a loss or puzzled by events, but he did not despair. He understood his task was to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), but that doesn’t mean that he always won the arguments or that he always had an answer that satisfied his audience.

In Acts 17, Paul faced Stoics and Epicureans (v.18). And while Stoics are in short supply in our day, Epicureans are plentiful. And what does he say to them:  he quotes their poets and philosophers, but first he spoke of “Jesus and the resurrection” (v. 18), he also says, “this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.”

He proclaims God as the greatest possible being, the creator of Adam, the instigator and maintainer of history and the cosmos, the sovereign God. Implicitly he is confirming the historicity of Genesis in the face of the Stoics and evolutionist like the Epicureans. But he does so in a winsome way by quoting the poets Epimendides and Aratus, just as he quotes Euripides in 1 Corinthians 15:33, and creates wholesome lists which at least share the Stoic ethical vocabulary in Philippians 4:8.

And Paul tells us something of extreme importance in Philippians 4:9: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Paul’s behavior of perplexity in faith, winsome and informed evangelism, and a refusal to retreat from the Areopagus, the Sanhedrin, or the Imperial Court, his stand upon his political rights (Acts 16:37; 21:39; 22:25-29) for the purpose of the gospel are all to be practiced by the Christian, “and the God of peace with be with” us. Our callings may not allow us the access, gifting, or training given to Paul, but we must fight and we must rest in Christ.

Thus should we live; we may not be able to explain the origins and content of the Bible and human origins in a way that will satisfy our contemporaries. But if we follow Paul’s example “some men” will join us and believe (Acts 17:34), others will mock and others will say, “We will hear you again about this” (Acts 17:32). And that is enough until Jesus returns, and then “every knee [shall] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Next month (D.V.), we will begin a series on love.

The Problem of Literalism Part 5: Ryrie

Note: If you haven’t read the first four articles in this series, please do so. We are in the midst of a cumulative argument about literalism within biblical hermeneutics and the best way to understand and practice interpreting the Bible.

I have attempted to lay out the argument that Spinoza’s literalism is incompatible with Christianity, but this leads us to the difficulty that a large group of Christians promote a system of hermeneutics which has the appearance of being identical to the Epicurean belief policy.  Their definition of literalism, “interpretation that gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking” [Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism: Revised and Updated (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 91], sounds very much like Spinoza’s.

The above quote comes from Charles Ryrie, an august proponent of a doctrinal system called Dispensationalism. He holds two secular academic degrees, including a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. He is a sophisticated and academic defender who has written a Dispensational systematic theology—Basic Theology. Obviously, godly Dispensationalists are not Epicureans, and it would be a gross injustice to call them such—especially, given their contribution in maintaining the gospel against encroaching modernity in the last century.  Let’s see if we can’t clarify the situation.

Dispensationalism as a system is a relative newcomer to theology, dating from about the 1840s with some of its unique components beginning to appear on the historical horizons in the mid-1700s. (By theology, I mean a systematic understanding of the biblical canon.) It is different from Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed theology in that its proponents are united around an understanding of the end times, but not around their understanding of salvation, and polity.

Our interest is in the interpretive belief policy of literalism as basic to the system. Ryrie lists out three fundamental characteristics of Dispensationalism: (1)Israel and the Church are kept distinct, and (2)“This distinction between Israel and the church is born out of a system of hermeneutics that is usually called literal interpretation,” Dispensationalism: Revised and Updated (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 47, original italicized. Ryrie also holds as a fundamental distinction (3) “the glory of God,” but he has confused his hoped for outcome with the system itself.

Let’s trace out the contours of Ryrie’s definition of literalism with some examples to help us understand his meaning: “The prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of Christ—His birth, His rearing, His ministry, His death, His resurrection—were all fulfilled literally” Ibid, 92. Ryrie provides us a clear example to test his definition of literalism: all of the prophecies concerning the first coming of Christ “were all fulfilled literally.”

Here is one such text, Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Ryrie states, “An individual from the woman’s seed (Jesus Christ) will deal a death blow to Satan’s head at the cross while Satan will cause Christ to suffer (‘bruise his heel’),” Basic Theology (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1986), 205.

As far as I am able to ascertain, there is not a single point of this prophecy which Ryrie “gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking.” Satan being sent to hell is read into “bruise your head,” and Christ’s suffering on the cross is read into “bruise his heel.” The word serpent in the wider context is read as Satan, and “her offspring” is read as Jesus Christ. These readings can be defended on figurative and typological grounds, but not on any form of literal or normal readings.

Genesis 3 is a particularly helpful test case, because the apostles never comment directly on its fulfillment. Ryrie’s interpretation is then developed only from his own hermeneutic and not from apostolic comment. When one begins to consider the apostles’ non-literal fulfillments, examples of typological and figurative interpretations can be multiplied (Matt. 2:15 compared to Hos. 11:1; Gal. 3:13 compared to Deut. 21:22-23, et cetera).

Ryrie expands his definition with a quote from J. P. Lange:

The literalist (so called) is not one who denies that figurative language, that symbols, are used in prophecy, nor does he deny that great spiritual truths are set forth therein: his position is, simply, that the prophecies are to be normally interpreted (i.e., according to the received laws of language) as any other utterance are interpreted—that which is manifestly figurative being so regarded, Dispensationalism, 92.

We must draw from this that what “normal” means is a careful collation of all the data of the Bible to discern the intent of God in his use of symbolic, literal, and typological language.  The different usages of words can be harmonized because while there are many human authors, God coordinates and inspires the activity. If this is what is intended, Ryrie’s hermeneutic is essentially identical to Augustine or John Owen—neither of which were Dispensationalists.

And so let’s expand his definition by what he believes is the necessary outcome of his hermeneutics: “The nonliteralist is the nonpremillennialist, the less specific and less consistent literalists are covenant premillennialist and the progressive dispensationalist, and the consistent literalist is a dispensationalist,”  (102).

What becomes apparent from the above is that “literalism” is the theological outcome of Dispensationalism. If a hermeneutical system does not come to Dispensational outcomes, than it’s not literalism. The practical consequence of this is that Ryrie’s literalism might best be defined as any orthodox interpretation of the Bible that maintains Dispensationalism. But most importantly, the definition of literalism is suddenly limited to Dispensational outcomes.

It is readily apparent that Spinoza and Ryrie are claiming the same basic hermeneutical system, and I hope that it is equally obvious that Ryrie is not a materialist, and certainly not a literalist in the sense that Spinoza was. He’s not an Epicurean because he believes in the God revealed by the Bible—Trinitarian, personal, separate from creation, and self-consciously revealing himself through nature and the Bible. And Ryrie is not going to violate these beliefs which Augustine called the “universal faith” in any interpretation.

So why do Ryrie and Spinoza formulate their interpretive belief policies in the same way?  Rhetorical advantage and habits of mind must play a part: literal and normal carry beneficial connotations in Ryrie’s thought and in the circle of Christians which he is most comfortable speaking. Literal and normal sound like wonderful tools to cut through the knots of un-fulfilled and fulfilled prophecy and rising materialism in the Church; but pressing the provided definitions leads to something like “interpretations that come to the same conclusions that I hold to about the end times.” Literal and normal hermeneutics then take their place with words like authentic, relevant, freedom, democracy, love, and the like—big positive concepts without much intrinsic significance.

My suspicion is that the rhetorical advantages of the term literal and normal occur among Christians because of their introduction in the Bible conference circuit in the 1850s. This was combined with a misstep by Christian apologists in response to the rising Epicureanism by “common sense” or “normal” interpretations of the world and the word (cf. Shedd, “The Nature, and Influence, of the Historic Spirit,” Theological Essays). The common sense response was certainly healthier for the Church than what became known as Christian liberalism, and often more edifying than even more modern Christian responses, but normal simply doesn’t go deep enough. It shored up the Church but was and is not robust enough to withstand the caustic literalism of the Epicureans, nor coherent and satisfying to many godly Christians.

So let’s come back to what Ryrie calls the sine qua non of Dispensationalism.  What he apparently means by “literal interpretation” is an interpretation of the Bible that holds to orthodox beliefs and keeps Israel and the Church distinct. In other words, the separation of Israel and the Church is a primary belief policy in the Dispensational interpretive system. And it’s a potentially valid presupposition that works itself out as Dispensational theology with a mixture of literal and typological interpretations and historical orthodoxy.

The issue is that all theological outcomes are dependent on some primary belief polices. Similar interpretive policies lead to similar outcomes. The tension that arises in the conversation about what the Bible means is the almost universal habit of the human mind for the hermeneutical belief policies to become ingrained in other theological conclusions as non-articulated assumptions. The interpretive belief policy seems so true its origin and coherence are not questioned.

While the thoughtful proponents of a view, say a Spinoza, come to the conclusion that God is not personal and interprets the Bible literally, it is doubtful that the average neo-atheist is aware of this when he brings up the problem of evil—an argument that takes God’s benevolence “literally.” The atheist accepts Spinoza’s interpretive system of mere materialism and goes his way.  A similar event occurs in the Church; most Calvinists have not worked out proof texts for the compatibility of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, nor Arminians their egalitarian definition of love and libertarian free will. Each one of these interpretive belief policies is theoretically possible, but for them to be validated, the underlying framework must be exposed, proven and supported by Scripture and reason.

So let’s gather our conclusion: rhetorically Ryrie claims to be literalist, but he’s defining literalism as an interpretive system that supports Israel and the Church being kept separate. He allows and promotes prophecy being interpreted typologically as long as the distinction between Israel and the Church is maintained (see his interpretation of Genesis 3 above). With the exception of the Israel/Church distinction, he is following Augustine’s general outline for hermeneutics and rejecting Spinoza’s view.

Next month we will draw together our conclusions on the “problem of literalism.”

The Problem of Literalism Part 4: Spinoza

“But we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense. . . . If we do not find it signifying anything else in normal linguistic usage, that is how we must interpret the expression, however much it may conflict with reason. . . . For, as we have already shown, we are not permitted to adjust meaning of Scripture to the dictates of our reason or our preconceived opinions; all explanations of the Bible must be sought from the Bible alone.” Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10.

I once started a sermon with the above quote. The regular church members nodded their heads in assent and approval until I informed them that the quote was written by one of the most vicious modern enemies of Christianity, Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677). He used literal sense as a devastating weapon against even the possibility of revealed religion. And he did so as a theist.

We live in world enframed by Spinoza’s system of interpretation and his materialistic philosophy. Men such as Dawkins (a biologist) and Ehrman (a biblical text critic) use his interpretive method without thought or apology. Even within the church, this system of materialism influences our minds in such a way that we accept the vocabulary of this theory of interpretation without thought.

A warning before we begin, if a reader deals only with Spinoza’s rhetoric, he or she will quickly be led into a morass, but if one deals carefully with his definitions, logic, and presuppositions, the foundation of his caustic literalism becomes clear. His intent is especially apparent in the application of his interpretive belief policy; Romans 15:20 is a good place to begin; he translates it, “Anxiously endeavoring not to preach where the name of Christ was already invoked, lest I build on an alien foundation”  Ibid.157. The context of this passage is Paul speaking to the churches of Rome about his desire to preach the gospel in areas where no other missionary had been.

It will be instructive here to compare his translation with the contemporary translation of the King James Version: “Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation.”

Spinoza has made some curious translation decisions; the first is to translate euvaggeli,zesqai as merely “to preach” rather than “to preach the gospel.” To preach is an acceptable translation, though it is an extremely minimal one given the context and the Greek word’s relationship to the word translated as gospel (euvagge,lion) or good news used in verse 19. Throughout the Greek New Testament and to a lesser degree the Septuagint, the Greek words translated as gospel and "preach the gospel" refer to the message of salvation or the details regarding the life of Jesus Christ (s.v., BDAG).

The second choice is to translate avllo,trioj as alien rather than “another man’s.” Again the translation exists within the spectrum of meaning of the word, but it does seem insensitive to the context.

Having considered the translating issues, let’s continue with his exposition of Romans 15:20:

Clearly, had they all the same style of teaching, and had they established the Christian religion on the same foundation, Paul would definitely not have termed another Apostle’s foundations ‘alien’, as his own would have been the same. Since he does pronounce them alien, it necessarily follows that each of them constructed the edifice of religion on a different foundation. . . .Furthermore, if we read through the Epistles themselves with some care, we shall see that the Apostles do indeed agree about religion itself, but widely disagree as to its foundations. Paul, for instance, to strengthen men in religion and to show them that salvation depends upon the grace of God alone, taught that no one may glory in their works but in faith alone, and that no one is justified by works (see Epistle to the Romans, 3.27-8), as well as the whole doctrine of predestination. On the other hand, James, in his Epistle, teaches that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone (see Epistle of James 2.24); indeed, James sums up his whole doctrine of religion in a very few words ignoring all of Paul’s arguments. Ibid.

We now have before us Spinoza’s biblical literalism; each individual word is to be taken in its “normal sense.” And there is no attempt to harmonize the interpretation through either textual or canonical context. In Spinoza’s mind it is abundantly clear that the gospels or the preaching of James and Paul were at loggerheads. They have different foundations and so there is a formal contradiction between the two foundations. Any attempt to harmonize James 2:24 and Romans 3:27-28 by suggesting that it is an apparent contradiction because one of the authors is using the word faith or justification differently is to be rejected as adjusting the “meaning of Scripture to the dictates of our reason or our preconceived opinions.” The preconceived notion in this case is that the preaching of the apostles was “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) and the inspiration of the Scripture which allows the writers’ intent to be harmonized independently of different emphasis in vocabulary usage.

The foundation of Spinoza’s literalism is his understanding of God. As he tells us, “God’s will and God’s understanding are in reality one and the same thing. . .” Ibid. 62. (Cf. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion). The logical outcome of this statement is pantheism. All that is is God. And Spinoza slyly exposes this by immediately exhibiting the ramifications for biblical interpretation: “If, for example, God said to Adam that he did not wish him to eat of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ it would entail a contradiction for Adam to be able to eat of it, and therefore it was impossible that Adam should eat of it; for the eternal decree must have contained an eternal necessity and truth.” Ibid.

In pantheism if God were to speak, God’s word would be identical to the events of the physical world, because creation or nature is not separate from God in anyway. For Adam to disobey God would mean that Adam was somehow distinct from God, but if there are no internal distinctions within God, there can be no external distinctions. Thus Adam cannot disobey, because he is a part of God, just as nature is a part of God.

Simply put Spinoza’s God is not personal or a person, because there are no internal distinctions within his God. His God is no more personal than gravity. The God of Spinoza cannot say, “I Am the I Am,” (Exod. 3:14), because self-consciousness requires the internal distinction of subject, object, and subject-percipient. (Cf. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3.4, Augustine, On the Trinity).  Thus the source of biblical revelation is only the imagination of men (cf. Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 1).

Further, because there is no distinction between God and nature; all that is knowable for humanity is material and material causes or as he puts it rather bluntly: “nothing happens contrary to nature, but nature maintains an eternal, fixed, and immutable order. . .” And “I will show from some examples in the Bible that by the decrees, volitions and providence of God, Scripture itself means nothing other than the order of nature which necessarily follows from his eternal law”  Theological-Political Treatise, 83.  What is is absolutely God’s will because there is no distinction between nature and God and no internal distinctions within God.  Spinoza cannot be counted an atheist, but he was an incredibly rigorous and philosophical pantheist.

Since all that is knowable is nature or extrapolated directly from human observation of nature, knowledge of god/nature can spring only from the human observation of nature. The keener the observer of nature the more insight he has into god. Since nature and god are identical and god is infinite and eternal, nature itself must exhibit a uniformity and continuity which stretches back into eternity.

The Bible then is no more or no less true than any other book which is not drawn from observable and testable universal principals. As a product of the human mind, it can only bear witness to the speculation or imagination of its authors. Or as Spinoza puts it in reference to understanding “natural divine law”: “Belief in a historical narrative however reliable it may be, can give us no knowledge of God nor consequently love of God either. For love of God arises from knowledge of him; and knowledge of him has to be drawn from universal notions which are certain in themselves and well-known. . . .” Ibid, 61.

Because the Bible’s historical narrative has no value in telling us about God or nature, it must be reinterpreted along literal lines or by natural reason: and he exhibits this for us in the account of Adam and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil:

Hence, this one prohibition laid by God on Adam entails the whole divine law and agrees fully with the dictate of the natural light of reason. It would not be difficult to explain the whole history, or parable, of the first man on this basis, but I prefer to let it go. I cannot be absolutely sure whether my explanation agrees with the intention of the writers, and many people do not concede that this history is a parable, but insist it is a straight forward narrative. Ibid. 65.

Spinoza’s literalism is not concerned with the claims of the text. The Bible is to be reinterpreted through natural reason. Historical narrative must become a parable; the writers’ intent is tossed into the ditch of history, because this is what we are taught by “the natural light of reason.” And thus we find that Varreo’s (cf. the first Augustine article) demystifying project has reasserted itself in history. Spinoza’s exegetical project was to conform the Bible to the light of reason, and reason is defined and limited by his presuppositions and definitions drawn from a materialistic philosophy.

How is it that Varreo’s ancient project could reappear in history and be applied to the Bible? The answer is that Varreo and Spinoza share some common first premises. And these first premises deal with what knowledge is, what man is, and what nature is, and what God is. The first premise held by Spinoza and Varreo is Epicureanism.

Epicureanism is named after its founder Epicurus (c. 341-370 B.C.) who had a rather phenomenal thing to say about the best belief policy for interpretation: “We must accept without further explanation the first mental image brought up by each word if we are to have any standard to which to refer a particular inquiry, problem, or opinion” [“Letter to Herodotus,” trans. Russel M. Geer, in Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings (New York: MacMillian Publishing Company, 1964), 9, 38a.].

His quote is interesting, because it’s the rough draft of Spinoza’s hermeneutical policy. And it’s the same as the method used by everyone else who consistently holds to the first premises of materialism in its variant forms—pantheistic and atheistic. The point to grasp from this is that Spinoza’s hermeneutic policy springs from prior presuppositions (some of which can be proven false or at least improbable). Since his presuppositions begin with rejecting the possibility of a God separate from creation, his hermeneutic of literalism confirms it. The Bible cannot be inspired as described by the authors of the Bible because nature, as interpreted by the Epicureans, does not reveal such a God. Nature and the Bible cannot be harmonized, because nature is the real while the Bible contains the imagination of men. The authors of the Bible must contradict each other, because they are just making stuff up. And so the literalism of Spinoza.

A few thoughts before closing: We live in an Epicurean age; we breathe materialism. But philosophical and theological sensuality or materialism is not necessitated by nature nor is the Epicurean hermeneutic.

Lording willing, next month we will move to Dispensational literalism.

The Problem of Literalism Part 3: Augustine Continued

In our last article, we established that Augustine rejected the possibility of the Bible containing myth, any attempt to interpret nature independently of the Bible, and any attempt to interpret the Bible based solely on nature. He came to these conclusions because the Bible claims to be a revealed account of God and man. As the modern church is beset by both enemies and intended friends pressing natural and mythological accounts of God upon us, it is extremely important that we understand Augustine’s “historical literalism.” The importance of this is heightened by the modern problem of literalism and the rhetorical weight of the term literal among modern Christians.

Let us, return to Augustine’s understanding of literalism:

I have started here to discuss Sacred Scripture according to the plain meaning of the historical facts, not according to future events which they foreshadow. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 41, trans. John Hammond Taylor (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982) 39, 1.17.34.

He believed that the Bible’s meaning was “the precise meaning [the author] intended to express (On Christian Doctrine, 1.36.40). The Bible then teaches historical facts when the author represents them as such. And he accepts the book of Genesis as providing such facts. To understand what the Bible teaches about reality is to have its literal meaning. He rejects the possibility of Genesis being mythical, but what he does not reject is that it takes effort to understand what the historical or literal significance of the text is.

Here’s an example of the sort of work that he attempts:

Was it from the unformed material substance that God made a material voice by which He might utter sound, Let there be light? In this supposition, a material sound was created and formed before light. But if this is so, there already was time, in which the voice moved as it travelled through successive localities of the sound. And if time already existed before light was made, at what time was the voice produced which sounded the words, Let there be light? To what day did the time belong? For there is a day on which light was made, and it is the first day in the series. Perhaps, to this day belongs all the extent of time in which the material sound of the voice, Let there be light, was produced, and in which the light itself was made.  Ibid, 28,1.9.16.

What Augustine is exploring with exegetical care is the relationship between time, the existence of sequential order, and the number of days in creation. In Augustine’s mind to understand the literal significance of the first day of creation requires that we understand whether time is defined by the existence of sequential order or the existence of light. And he then probes the relationship between the term day and time and the sequential order of words.

Obviously this is not the way that most moderns of any stripe come to the text. We tend to charge in with our presuppositions of Old Earth, Young Earth, neo-Darwinist, or whatever. But Augustine’s meditation includes what we are taught by nature (grammar, lexicon, context, and physical observation) and reason. In his mind, the question of what time is, and the coming into existence of time decide the literal significance of the text.

His tentative conclusion, seen below, is that the text teaches that creation includes at least one twenty-four-hour period, the seventh, or perhaps four twenty-four-hour days:

The more likely explanation, therefore, is this: these seven days of our time, although all the seven days of creation in name and in numbering, follow one another in succession and mark off the division of time, but those first six days occurred in a form unfamiliar to us as intrinsic principles within the created. Hence evening and morning, light and darkness, that is, day and night, did not produce the changes that they do for us with the motion of the sun. This we are certainly forced to admit with regard to the first three days, which are recorded and numbered before the creation of the heavenly bodies. Ibid., 4.18.33.

Our modern materialistic presuppositions require a natural temporal uniformity and continuity which is rarely articulated, but which is quickly exposed by Augustine’s probing. And he has every right to ask both Christians and secularists by what authority we presume. He does not reject that Genesis 1 represents history: the issue is that portions of Genesis 1 may not exist in an identical temporal order to our experience. We know that his conclusion is tentative, because he would be open to readdressing the number of days. He goes to say in this vein:

In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Scared Scripture. Ibid., 1.18.27.

For Augustine reason is not the source of truth. God is the source of both truth and reason. Reason is fundamentally the ability to distinguish between things and to establish the relationship of those things to each other (cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 6.51-56).Yet given man’s finitude and jejune heart, it is always possible for believers to misinterpret the world and to a lesser degree the Word. Given this possibility, the Christian apologist must accept the posture of humility before both of God’s revelations. “Faith seeking understanding” must allow for correction, even by heathens, but the faith must trump even persuasive natural explanations:

When they are able, from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture. But when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, wither we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. And we will so cling to our Mediator, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that we will not be lead astray by the glib talk of false philosophy or frightened by the superstition of false religion. When we read the inspired books in the light of this wide variety of true doctrines which are drawn from a few words and founded on the firm basis of Catholic belief, let us choose that one which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. But if this is not clear, then at least we should choose an interpretation in keeping with the context of Scripture and in harmony with our faith. But if the meaning cannot be studied and judged by the context of Scripture, at least we should choose only that which our faith demands. For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of a writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. If both these difficulties are avoided, the reader gets full profit from his reading. Failing that, even though the writer’s intention is uncertain, one will find it useful to extract an interpretation in harmony with our faith. Ibid., 45, 1.21.

Augustine sought to harmonize three components of God’s revelation of himself—nature, the Word, and the faith. The faith for Augustine is the doctrine necessary for us to cling to Jesus Christ as our mediator. This doctrine is found clearly in the Scripture and impressed on at least the hearts if not the minds of all those who believe (cf. Rom. 8:7, 1 John 2:27, 1 Thess. 4:9, Heb. 8:11). Without these beliefs, the catholic or universal faith, there is simply no Christianity 1.  To pull a tread from the fabric of the faith begins the process of destroying the entire garment. The Bible and the different communities of Christ’s followers say much more than “the faith,” but to contradict this central core of profession is to jeopardize the possibility of salvation 2. There cannot be a contradiction between the beliefs necessary for salvation, the Word of God, and the world of God, because without the faith there are no people of God.

And so let us conclude here. Literalism in Augustine’s work is the “plain meaning of the historical facts,” but this is not a firstsight reading.  The literal meaning is to discern the mind of an infinite God with abject humility and the use of all mental resources. God reveals to us the reality of the events of creation, salvation, and universal human history in the Bible. Augustine’s literalism is a careful harmonizing of the faith, the Word, and the world for the purpose of understanding God’s account. It is a position of humility and not presumption. Bold in what it declares about salvation, but careful in regards to establishing the necessary harmony between the faith, the Word, and the world.

Lord willing, next month, we will continue with the problem of literalism by considering Spinoza’s caustic literalism.

1. The catholic faith here cannot mean all the distinctions, past or present, held by the Church of Rome. Proof of this can be found in the Church of Rome’s sporadic persecution of Augustinians since at least Gottschalk (c. 804-c. 869) which intensified and culminated at Trent. The Jesuits’ bitter destruction of the Jansenists, an Augustinian reform movement in the post-Trent Roman Church, also requires that there are contradictions between Augustine’s universal faith and the contemporary doctrine of the Church of Rome. Further, it is not a coincidence that Luther was an Augustinian monk and that one can barely turn a page of Calvin’s Institutes without finding a quote of Augustine nestled among the Scripture citations.

2. The absolute minimum for orthodoxy or to be within the faith as to Genesis 1 and 2, requires creation ex nihilo, an historical first man, and an historical fall.

The Problem of Literalism Part 2: Augustine

Originally, I had intended to consider Spinoza’s caustic literalism, but events and more study suggest that we should begin in chronological order with our friend Augustine’s “historical literalism.” Given the overarching theme of our series, we will have to develop a bit of context to better understand the sophistication and relevance of his view to our wider discussion. So, let’s begin by considering the interpretive systems that Augustine rejected; what we shall discover is that Augustine anticipated the “modern” attempt to reinterpret the Bible as salvageable myth

In The City of God, Augustine demolished the arguments of both contemporary pagans and philosophers that the fall of Rome was caused by the introduction of Christianity into the Roman Empire. The traditionalists argued that the popularity of Christianity had led to the abandonment of the old gods, and these gods then withdrew their protection from the Roman people, leading to the victory of the Goths.

Augustine attacked the pagan apologetic by arguing that the worship of the pagan gods was sub-rational and beneath the dignity of both Divinity and man.  His main pagan source for the critique was the work of a historian and philosopher by the name of Marcus Varreo (116-27 B.C.). Varreo had attempted to rationalize the Roman religious traditions, histories, and practices into a coherent system that would serve both the philosophers and the civil religious needs of the Roman people. And he did this by developing a threefold distinction for the source of theology or the accounts of the gods.

Augustine quotes Varreo and then comments on these distinctions:

Of these he calls one mythical, another physical, and the third civil. If Latin usage permitted, we should call the kind which he placed first “fabular;” but let us call it “fabulous,” for the word “mythical” is derived from mythos, which means “fable” in Greek. That the second kind should be called “natural” the custom of speech now admits; and he has given the Latin name to the third, which he calls “civil,” Then he says: “They call that kind of theology mythical which is especially used by the poets; the physical is that which the philosophers use: and the civil, that which the people use. The City of God against the Pagans, trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 246-247, 6.5.

Augustine goes on to tell us that Varreo clearly rejects the possibility of recovering any sort of truth from the mythical accounts of the gods as given by poets such as Homer. Yet, Varreo attempts to reinterpret the myths through natural theology or philosophy for the purpose of continuing the civil religion. This was required because in the ancient world there was no separation between the state and the religion, and religion served as a tool for comforting and controlling the masses. Civil religion was collapsed into mythical and natural theology because it was dependent on both.

Augustine then described Varreo’s efforts:

But all these things, our adversaries say, have certain physical interpretations, that is, interpretations in terms of natural phenomena—as if in this discussion we were seeking physics rather than theology, which is an account not of nature, but of God. For although the true God is God not by opinion but by nature, nonetheless all nature is not God. For there is certainly a nature of man and beast and tree and stone, but none of these is God. If, however, when we discuss the rites of the mother of the gods, the first premise of the interpretation is that the mother of the gods is the earth, why do we seek further? Why consider anything else? What gives clearer in support of those who say that all those gods were once men? For if the earth is their mother, surely they are the sons of earth. In the true theology, however, the earth is the work of God, not His mother. Ibid, 255, 6.8.

What an insight! If a philosopher or historian begins with the first premise that all that is is the earth, then all theology must be limited to the earth. Mythical theology and natural theology are identical in that they never transcend nature. The poets make the gods act like men because the greatest persons in their experience is man, and the natural philosophers make men gods because they are the persons who give significance to a silent cosmos. Poetic accounts of the gods and natural accounts of the gods have the same theological outcome—the deification of humanity, either as gods or component parts of the gods.

Augustine also begins to draw out the difference among the mystical gods, the god of the natural philosophers, and the God of the Bible. Nature’s God is not nature, nor produced by nature. Because the God revealed in the Bible transcends nature as its creator, he can be greater than the sum of nature. Further, Augustine introduces a form of theology beyond the categories of Varreo—true theology or the true account of God.

Unlike the conclusions of the natural theologian or the mythical accounts of the poets, true theology is founded on the transcendent God’s revelation of a true history (cf. The City of God, 19.18). This distinction between mythical and natural over and against the revealed theology continues throughout the rest of his work, even including his trust in the scriptural account of the ages of the pre-diluvium men:

But the longevity of the men who lived in those times [prior to the flood] cannot now be demonstrated by anything within our experience. Nevertheless, we should not on that account impugn the accuracy of sacred history. Our impudence in not believing what it narrates would be as great as the evidence of the fulfillment of its prophecies is clear to our eyes. . . .Why is it credible that something which does not happen here should happen somewhere else, yet incredible that something which does not happen now should have happened at some other time? Ibid, 650-651, 15.9.

Fundamentally then, Augustine rejects two sorts of theology and therefore two accounts of history: the mythical and the natural. He embraces a third form of history and theology which is revealed by God.

What I hope is apparent to the modern reader is that Varreo’s project of using natural theology/philosophy/science to demystify his pagan religious sources is now pressed upon the church as an interpretive principle for the Bible. Here’s an example of a modern critic of Christianity complaining about believers’ refusal to accept the category of myth:

But for fundamentalists, who take myth in its popular sense of ‘lie,’ as distinct from archetypical or elemental truth, myth must be collapsed into history—the record of things as they actually happened in the world of verifiable, external reality. Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2004), 90.

Ruthven’s frustration with “fundamentalists” is their refusal to accept Varreo’s or the natural philosophers’ rejection of the possibility of a revealed history. Yet Dr. Ruthven and his Christian cohorts like Peter Enns are frustrated with Christians of all ages and the text of Scripture itself. The genre of mythical theology and history was well known to Moses (cf. Deut. 4:35-39 and Acts 7:22), the Apostles (cf. 2 Pet. 1:16, 1 Tim. 1:4), and the early church, and it has constantly been rejected by Christians throughout history. Augustine was neither the first nor the last Christian to understood that myths were fables—narratives invented by the poets (authors/prophets) for a variety of motives.

Part of the reason that it seems so reasonable to call parts of the Bible myth is caused by something that was noted by Tolkien: “History often resembles ‘Myth’, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff” (“On Fairy-Stories,” in The Monsters and the Critics [London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1983], 127). Natural history, mythical history, and revealed history have the same basic elements because they are all attempting to describe what happened in the past. Modern natural history agrees that there was a first human, as does mythical history, and revealed history. All three histories develop a narrative of the first man. The difference is not the subject or the fundamental elements, but the sources of the information and, as Augustine noted above, first premises of interpretation. Natural history is limited to nature interpreted by the mind of man, mythical history by the imagination of the poets, and revealed history by the revelation of God. As Augustine understood, if the Bible is mythical, then the revealing God is simply a fabulous fable.

Let’s draw together what we’ve learned. Augustine rejected the possibility of interpreting the Bible as myth or interpreting it through natural presuppositions.  He considered the same interpretive options open to modern believers and in response he developed as a part of his hermeneutic a historical literalism.  He believed that it was a revealed history.  He believed that the God of the Bible was nature’s God. And we are now ready to consider what he meant by literal interpretation, but for that we will have to wait until next month.

The Problem of Literalism Part 1: Introduction

For the purpose of illustration, let me state something confusing: Spinoza is a biblical literalist and so are Ryrie and Augustine.  It’s also true that Spinoza is not a literalist and neither are Ryrie and Augustine.

Let’s introduce ourselves to the cast of theologians. Augustine (354-430 AD) was a theologian in North Africa and perhaps the most influential of the Church Fathers. His theological reflections were the foundation of the Reformation. Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677 AD) was a Dutch philosopher who attacked both Jewish and Christian orthodoxy through a hermeneutical system. And Charles Ryrie is an elder statesman for Dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism is a view of the end times requiring almost absolute separation between Israel and the Church and is widely held by conservative Christians in the U.S.

These three men each held to a form of biblical literalism, and they illustrate for us what I am calling the problem of literalism. Literalism in our context is a belief policy about how to read the Bible. So Spinoza thought the Bible should be read literally as did Augustine and Ryrie, but each meant something quite different.

We then face a situation where there are three fairly distinct definitions of literalism: Spinoza’s literalism attacks the possibility of revelation. Augustine’s literalism supports the historical reality of the Bible. And Ryrie’s literalism supports a particular view of the end times.

Let’s spend a few moments establishing their definitions from their own writings.

Augustine’s understanding of literalism can be found in his commentary on the opening chapters of Genesis entitled The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesis ad Litteram). He states there:

But this is to give an allegorical and prophetical interpretation, a thing which I did not set out to do in this treatise. I have started here to discuss Sacred Scripture according to the plain meaning of the historical facts, not according to future events which they foreshadow. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 41, trans. John Hammond Taylor (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982) 39, 1.17.34.

In Augustine “literalism” is the historical reality of the text in comparison to the future and spiritual significance. Augustine would certainly not approve of the modern tendency of combining allegorical and mythological. Regardless, he is attempting in his commentary to work out the historical and factual framework communicated by the creation account.

Spinoza is a fascinating figure because his work is often seen as laying the foundation for biblical higher criticism by demanding that the Bible have only human authors.  His form of literalism became a weapon to deconstruct the Bible and savage Jewish and Christian orthodoxy as foolish and incoherent.  Here’s a quote that catches both the power of his rhetoric and his basic interpretive policy:

But we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense. . . . If we do not find it signifying anything else in normal linguistic usage, that is how we must interpret the expression, however much it may conflict with reason. . . . For, as we have already shown, we are not permitted to adjust meaning of Scripture to the dictates of our reason or our preconceived opinions; all explanations of the Bible must be sought from the Bible alone. Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 101.

The third usage is the interpretive policy of Christians who hold to Dispensationalism.  Ryrie puts it this way:

[Literalism] means interpretation that gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking.” Dispensationalism: Revised and Updated (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 91.

And then he adds a longer quote from J. P. Lange:

The literalist (so called) is not one who denies that figurative language, that symbols, are used in prophecy, nor does he deny that great spiritual truths are set forth therein: his position is, simply, that the prophecies are to be normally interpreted (i.e., according to the received laws of language) as any other utterance are interpreted—that which is manifestly figurative being so regarded (Ibid.).

Here we are: three definitions and three ways of going about reading the Bible. Some overlap is identifiable, and yet there is considerable distinction between the three definitions, and hence the problem of literalism.

My intention, Lord willing, is to consider each of these “literalisms” separately along with their ramifications over the next several months. Next month, we will consider “Caustic Literalism” as held by Spinoza.