Dear Friend,
I ended my last
letter on a question about why Christians should be concerned about historical (physical)
reality. I intend to tackle that question at some point, but before I do, I
want to continue with discussing the distinction I introduced in my last
letter, namely, the distinction between soul-stuff and physical stuff. (These
are, of course, technical terms I invented.) I want to discuss how I was raised
to read the Bible. My hope is to somewhat supplement my thoughts outlined in my
last letter. Here, I must admit, I am not really analyzing Jordan Peterson,
like I would hope to. That being said, Peterson does figure into my analysis,
and so I think it is quite appropriate to go on this little tangent.
As I have stated
previously, I was raised Catholic, and Catholic theology, even if it upholds
certain literal interpretations of scripture, is structured around spiritual
interpretation. This is especially true when it comes to reading the Old
Testament, which is interpreted not so much as history but as a sign or symbol
of the spiritual reality of the New Testament. (Catholics refer to this as typology,
though I will try not to be technical about terminology here.) I do not mean to suggest that
Catholics do not read the Bible as history. They do. But the historical literalism
is itself symbolic. Consider the following example. In the Catholic Church’s
rite of baptism, you will find the following prayer spoken by the priest prior
to baptism:
Father, you give us grace through
sacramental signs, which tell us of the wonders of your unseen power. In
baptism we use your gift of water, which you have made a rich symbol of the
grace you give us in this sacrament. At the very dawn of creation your Spirit
breathed on the waters, making them the wellspring of all holiness. The waters
of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end
of sin and a new beginning of goodness.
Through the waters of the Red Sea
you led Israel out of slavery, to be an image of God's holy people, set free
from sin by baptism. In the waters of the Jordan your Son was baptized by John
and anointed with the Spirit. Your Son willed that water and blood should flow
from his side as he hung upon the cross. . . .
Take a look at
how this prayer takes these stories from the Bible and spiritualizes them. The
waters of creation are a symbol of baptism. The waters of the flood are a sign
of baptism. The waters of the Red Sea are an image of baptism. Everything is a
sign or symbol of baptism. So when I was growing up Catholic, asking the
question of what was real and what was figurative, I believed that the real
thing was baptism. The waters of creation, the flood, or the Red Sea were just
symbols. All the force of these Biblical stories, their meaning and
significance, is not contained in the historical events being described by the
Bible, but in the spiritual event of baptism which they prefigure. And baptism
is soul-stuff. The soul-stuff is the real stuff. The spiritual truth of baptism
is what matters.
Again, I know I
am beating this horse to death, but I do not mean to suggest that Catholics
deny Biblical historicity. Still, that does not change the fact that I personally
was taught (intentionally or unintentionally) to read the Bible as though it
were a giant analogy that points to a spiritual reality, and the natural
consequence of being raised this way was that I didn’t care whether the Bible
was historical fact. It might very well be the case that a worldwide flood is a
great analogy for baptism, but it would be a great analogy even if it didn’t
happen. Perhaps it’s a better story precisely if it didn’t happen?
Great analogies
can make bad realities. For example, the story of Adam and Eve is a great story
of creation and mankind’s fall, but do we really want to believe that, as a
historical fact, God created only two humans, and God designed them with the
intention in mind that their children would need to commit incest in order to
populate the world? This seems very strange. The writers of Genesis themselves
do not even appear to think this. (Observe how Cain fears other people, as
though they already existed.) It would surely be ridiculous to suppose that
Adam and Eve were ashamed of each other’s nakedness but God nevertheless forced
their sons and daughters to have sex with each other. Yet some Christians would
rather defend incest (at least in this instance) than to give up the literal interpretation.
How does it make any sense that God wanted incest when the story itself is
about sexual shame? That’s a rhetorical question. It makes no sense.
While it is true
that many Catholics consider the story of Adam and Eve to be literal, it is not
a great aberration from Catholic teaching to adopt the story of Adam and Eve,
or any number of other Biblical stories, as figurative. In fact, it is quite in
line with how Catholic theology works. The function of the Bible is, in many
ways, to offer us spiritual schemas, analogies, prefigurations, parables, typologies,
or any number of other literary structures that can then be transfigured into
theological structures. Let me give you a perfect illustration. A few weeks
ago, Catholic theologian Scott Hahn shared the following picture on social
media.
This picture is
meant to trace the structure of Biblical covenants from Adam to Jesus. All
covenants are structured using the same elements. There’s the covenant mediator
who is the Biblical figure through whom God establishes a covenant with
mankind. The mediator takes on a role, which is expressed in a form established
with a sign. As a literary device helping us see the structure of covenants
expressed in the Bible, this illustration is quite good. It shows the sort of
“typological” thinking that Catholics use when they study the Bible. But the
problem with this illustration is obvious to a sophomore philosophy student.
This illustration works just as well even if none of the characters actually
existed. Superman is Clark Kent even if Superman doesn’t exist, and Adam is a
husband even if he is purely fictional. Abram was circumcised, even if he was
made up. Noah had a household, if only in the story. We can make completely
true statements about things that don’t exist. In philosophy, this is referred
to as the problem of counterfactuals, and this problem has fascinated philosophers
from Plato to Russell.
Regardless of these counterfactuals, Catholics love
these parallelisms. Scott Hahn is rather famous because he converted to
Catholicism precisely because of these parallelisms (or types, as he would call
them). But imagine, for a second, growing up in an environment where these
parallels are the most important thing. There is this tendency to want to
analyze the Bible for every parallel, every foreshadowing, every cross
reference. Here’s a picture I have seen shared around Christian circles on
social media. While this is not a strictly Catholic example, it is a perfect illustration
of what I am talking about:
This graphic of
the Bible’s cross references (no pun intended) is accompanied by a Christian
apologetic argument that the cross references are proof the Bible is divinely
inspired. How can this book not be divine when it is so intricately woven and
interconnected? The shear volume of these connections alone is convincing.
Growing up, I was
quite impressed with this type of textual analysis. In some ways, I still am; but while I once might have found these patterns to be evidence of God, I no
longer think they are. A certain realization clicked in my brain that I was
more fascinated in the theology than in the reality. I was more interested in
the symbolism of the flood than in the flood itself, more interested in the
foreshadowing of the Passover than in the Passover, more interested in the
meaning of the crucifixion than in the actual crucifixion. There is a certain
type of death by theology. Man shall not live on cross references alone.
Even in this example,
the author I linked to makes the argument that the intricacy of the Bible is
proof of 1) divine authorship and 2) God’s ability to harmonize your life the
same way he harmonized the Bible. Notice that the one thing the post does not
argue is that any of the Bible is accurate history. In my experience,
Christians will often supply that last step themselves, as though literary
impressiveness was proof of historical accuracy, but it does not, in fact,
follow as a matter of pure logic.
There are two
distinct thoughts that I have at this point, and they are both complicated
enough to deserve their own letter to you. The first one I will mention only in
passing, but the second I will expand on just a little as it will segue us back
into discussing Jordan Peterson.
Firstly, while I
have stated that I grew up taking the Bible quite figuratively, and in fact
still take quite large portions of it figuratively, as I have matured I have
come to appreciate the historical value to a lot of the text. This historical
value, however, I have learned almost entirely from secular scholars. Some of
the best Biblical research comes from people who have, as it were, no
theological skin in the game. I’ll perhaps discuss this in more detail some
other time, but for now I will simply note that some Bible scholars (I am primarily thinking of Bart Ehrman) take the approach that you should not try to harmonize the Biblical text. If you want to think of the Bible as history, it becomes necessary to stop thinking about all the symbolism, signs, types, parallels, etc. Ehrman's approach is the exact opposite of the approach I was raised with. It is therefore no surprise that if I had no appreciation for the history in the Bible while wrapped up in the theology, this historical appreciation would come precisely through suspending theological judgment as Ehrman suggests. Many Christians hate Ehrman for this approach, but personally, Ehrman has done more for me than most Christians when it comes to thinking about the Bible as historical text.
Secondly, and
more relevant to the current discussion, if the goal is to create an
intellectual and/or spiritual framework of cross references, analogies,
typologies, archetypes, etc., there is no strict reason why one would limit
this scholarship or spirituality to the Biblical canon. In fact, many people do
not. I know I personally cannot and do not think of the Bible as a closed text.
Having grown up learning to find the parallels in different parts of the Bible,
and having taken up the attitude that these parallels are the primary method of
interpretation, it is quite impossible not to draw those parallels to other
non-Biblical texts.
You see, this way
of learning the Bible as parallelisms and cross references teaches one to read
the Bible as comparative literature, whether one realizes it or not. Once one
accepts this, then opening up the field to include other texts is not a change
in hermeneutics. It is merely a change in scope. And because I have an
education that includes classical literature, I find it easy to expand that
scope. Today, when I read the Biblical account of Noah’s flood, my brain files
it away next to the Deucalion flood and the flood of Utnapishtim. Moses
wandering the desert for 40 years gets classified next to Odysseus navigating
the Mediterranean for 10 years. Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil? That gets placed on the shelf next to the story of
Epimetheus and Pandora. Lott’s wife looking back at the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah? Orpheus looking back at Euridice. Each of these stories are so
profoundly parallel to each other that their coincidence speaks to deeper
realities. Personally, and maybe quite blasphemously, even the story of the
crucifixion and resurrection feels to me like it belongs as a footnote to Prometheus Bound.
If this way of
reading the Bible as comparative literature sounds familiar to you, it may well
be because this is how Jordan Peterson reads the scriptures. I am currently
making my way through his book We Who Wrestle with God. As I have previously
mentioned, I think almost all his interpretations of the Scriptures are wrong,
but he approaches the Bible in this open ended, comparative hermeneutic, which
fits in perfectly with what I am talking about. In the first chapter of We Who
Wrestle with God, Peterson spends a long time discussing creation, not from
the account of creation found in Genesis, but from the account presented in the
Enuma Elish. He goes on at length discussing how the divine masculine, Marduk, slays
and brings order to the divine feminine, Tiamat. Peterson’s account of creation
is extremely gendered, and the Enuma Elish is much more gendered than Genesis
chapter 1. In chapter 2 of his book, Peterson picks up the Genesis account with
the introduction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that is to say, exactly
where the Bible’s creation story becomes gendered. Now, I have my problem with
this gendered approach to creation, but what I want to point out here is that
Peterson has an open canon. Creation, for him, does not begin in the Bible.
Creation begins in the Enuma Elish and is only then transferred over to the
Bible. He follows the gendered thread running through these two creation
accounts, not in order to preserve a canon, but rather to preserve an
interpretation.
Notice that Peterson
approaches interpretation and text as two variables subject to negotiation. Peterson
could have presented an interpretation of creation that does not go outside the
Biblical text, but such an approach would limit the textual sources and
preclude interpretive options. The story of Yahweh bringing forth creation ex
nihilo does not permit the gendered interpretation of the story of Marduk and
Tiamat. On the other hand, the gendered interpretation of Marduk and
Tiamat goes together very well with the gendered interpretation of Adam and
Eve. The choice of whether to use a closed canon (limited to Biblical text) or
an open canon (not limited to Biblical texts) has very real consequences for
interpretation.
Here is where I
will diverge from most other people on Jordan Peterson. Many people agree with
Peterson’s scriptural interpretations but disagree with his tendency to use an
open canon. They will, for instance, think about Adam and Eve in very gendered
terms, like Peterson, but disagree with opening the comparison to Marduk and
Tiamat. I, on the other hand, am quite at home with using an open canon; I just disagree
with his interpretation.
Friend, I will leave this discussion here for now. This letter did not go in the direction I had originally planned. I had wanted to segue back into the Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists video. That unfortunately did not happen. I hope, however, that in my explanation of my own reading of the Bible, I have helped you understand some of the workings at play in how Peterson interprets the Bible. This will be continued soon enough. As I continue my way through We Who Wrestle with God, I will let you know if I come across anything worthy of discussion.
Farewell.