Homosexuality, Biblical Interpretation and the Christian Mind

As I noted in my last post, the moral and theological clarity of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of homosexuality, as in the case of the formidable Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, is commendable. Unfortunately, the Protestant trumpet blows with a rather uncertain sound.

Evangelicals, for the most part, are standing firm on Scripture, but have failed to reflect theologically on the doctrine of human nature. As a result, the secular disciplines of psychology and sociology often exert more influence on Evangelicals' understanding of human nature, including sexuality, than Scripture, Tradition or systematic theology. This is a worrisome fact for the future of Evangelical faithfulness.

But if Evangelicals have a weak understanding of human nature, Liberal Protestants have completely abandoned the Christian doctrine of the human person and embraced a heretical tradition stemming from Rousseau, Marx, and Dewey, which views humans through the mechanical philosophy of Bacon, Newton, Kant and Nietzsche.

In Modernity, human nature is conceptualized dualistically as matter plus spirit. Matter is seen as completely under the control of blind, mechanistic, natural forces, while spirit is the realm of freedom. However, many moderns are not convinced that the human soul is anything more than myth. Those who do believe in the soul tend to reduce it to matter in various ways.

As a result of this kind of dualism (which is very different from the dualism of orthodox Christianity), Modernity is fundamentally confused about human nature, ethics and natural law. Modern dualism posits an agonistic conflict between the realm of freedom (spirit) and the realm of necessity (matter). They are related in a mysterious and tragic manner. But Christian dualism views the realms of freedom and necessity as intimately and harmoniously related to each other and the dissonance (perceived in both Modernity and Christianity) is caused, not by agonistic metaphysical mystery, but by sin. So the fundamental conflict in Christian anthropology is not between nature and freedom, but between the obedient and joyful will and the bent and destructive will (i.e. between love and sinful rebellion).

For Moderns, the assertion of will is not the natural function of the human being in the service of joyful obedience to the law, but essentially rebellion against nature. For Modernity, nature is incoherent chaos, not creation. Modernity seeks to rebel against nature in the name of humanism and thereby feels itself to be both noble and anti-Christian simultaneously for it cannot understand how or why Christianity can be so peacefully accepting of God's creation as revelatory of the plan of the Loving Creator. For Modernity, nature is to be feared, tamed and ultimately overcome. For Christianity, on the other hand, love brings nature and human freedom into harmony.

Liberal Protestantism has completely embraced the Modern understanding of human nature, God and creation. Therefore, it is no longer Christian. We have moved beyond differences of understanding of one theological reality into the realm of the denial of the Creed itself. While the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Evangelicalism all remain within the realm of orthodoxy, Liberal Protestantism has separated itself from the Church universal and embraced heresy. Anyone who embraces the Liberal Protestant heresy is no longer a Christian except in the sense of having some sort of vague Christian heritage. The best name for this position is "post-Christian."

It is confusing for the general public, journalists, politicians and others who wish to know what Christianity thinks of public policy issues like abortion, homosexuality, marriage and so on. It is confusing because non-Christians have seized control of the denominational machinery, endowments and institutions of formerly Christian denominations. They still spout a lot of Christian phrases and slogans, but they have denied the content of the orthodox faith contained in Scripture and affirmed by all true Christians down through the centuries. Is it too radical to imagine that this shell of a religion may form the outward trappings of the anti-Christian religion that will be used by Satan and his minions, including the Antichrist, to deceive as many as possible in the last days?

What is the significance of the embrace of homosexuality by liberal Protestantism? It goes far beyond disagreement on just another ethical issue. Scripture itself clearly indicates that only a mind that is far gone into rebellion against God and the Truth can possible be so self-deceived and corrupt as to call homosexuality good. Romans 1 is often debated as to its meaning, but its real hermeneutical and theological significance is seldom appreciated.

I want to make three points that come out of Rom. 1:18-32, which is probably the most important passage in the Bible on the issue of homosexuality and hermeneutics. If you are not familiar with this passage, please go and read it carefully right now. What follows is not a complete exposition of the passage but just some important points it teaches.

1. In vv. 18-22 the Holy Spirit informs us that the natural man is under the wrath of God because of his rejection of natural revelation. Even apart from any knowledge of Scripture, the gentiles have rejected what can be known of God and human nature from creation and have thus incurred the wrath of God. As a result of this, we read in vv. 21-22:

"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools." (ESV)

So the first thing this passage says is that sin makes us stupid, or rather, that by sinning we make ourselves stupid. This is why what seems perfectly natural and common sensible is turned upside down by people professing to be religious, educated and intelligent.

2. The second point we need to note from this passage is the triple "God gave them up" in vv. 24, 26 and 28. It says that God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts in v. 24, to dishonorable passions in v. 26 and to a debased mind in v. 28. In v. 18 it says that men suppressed the truth and failed to honor God. In v. 25 it says that men exchanged the truth of God for a lie and in v. 27 it says that men gave up natural relations with women. So we see here a pattern in which men reject the truth and God rejects them. There are three stages. First, men reject the truth itself and then they reject the behavior which is the living out of that truth. Finally, they lose the ability even to know or understand the truth itself: their minds become darkened and they begin to call good evil and evil good.

3. The third point I wish to emphasize from this passage is that this rejection of the truth results in a generally debased mind which is no longer able to function properly as God intended. Conscience is seared, the mind is darkened and people can no longer perceive reality clearly. Those in this condition are untrustworthy guides to the interpretation of Scripture as a whole.

This "debased mind" is the opposite of the "Christian mind" that is needed in order for the interpreter of Scripture to discern correctly the meaning of Scripture. In vv. 29-31 we find those who have this debased mind no longer able to understand right from wrong and in v. 32 we find them giving approval to actions that lead to death. Such people are a menace because they advise the unwary to engage in actions that lead to death. These people are extremely dangerous spiritually because they have an appearance of religion and learning, but they are incapable of perceiving the truth.

Those liberal Protestants (and their Catholic fellow travelers) who have gotten to the place where they actually think that evil is good and good is evil actually encourage those who depend on their advice to do evil. Their darkened minds prevent them from interpreting Scripture according to its center in Jesus Christ; instead, they impose ideologies derived from modern philosophies upon Scripture and call it interpretation. Like the Gnostics of the second century, they actually make the philosophical systems derived from pagan culture the framework into which Scripture is pressed and distorted.

A good rule for lay people to follow in matters of religious authority is to let their common sense and Christian Tradition guide them in matters of Scriptural interpretation relating to obvious evils like homosexuality and to be very wary of religious teachers who try to invert morality as liberal Protestants do. In other words, if someone is so far out of touch with reality that he tries to convince you that up is down and homosexuality is normal, then have nothing to do with such a one. Such a person is unlikely to understand the Bible at all.

Peter warns the laity of the church that false teachers will rise up and bring in secret heresies. (II Pet. 2:1) Likewise Paul warns the Ephesian elders that after he is gone, wolves will come in speaking twisted things and draw away many. (Acts 20:29-30)

When Christians leave liberal Protestant denominations that have embraced homosexuality they are only doing what is logical and safe for the souls entrusted to their care. Pastors and parents must answer for how they shepherd their flocks and families and exposing them to religious leaders who have rejected Christ, the Gospel and the authority of Scripture in order to embrace modern heresies is irresponsible. As important as Christian unity is, we must realize that there can be no Christian unity between Christians and non-Christians. And heretical religious leaders who have rejected God and truth and twisted Scripture into a pretzel trying to justify their rejection of truth are not Christians.

Homosexuality is a kind of bright red line beyond which difference of interpretation between Christians mutates into a clear rejection of God. Beware especially of those who claim that homosexuality is just a minor issue about which Christians who agree on everything else can agree to disagree. This tactic buys time for the heretics to gather strength until they can impose their doctrine on the denomination or institution as a whole.

Also watch out for those who claim that you can't love someone unless you accept their sin as normal. No one does this consistently. In fact, no religious group in the world is more judgmental, moralizing and condeming of the politically incorrect than liberal Protestantism. When they plead with us who are orthodox and traditional not to judge or condemn those who engage in sexual vices, they are utter hypocrites and their arguments fall flat.

In short, homosexuality is a canary in the coal mine when it comes to Scriptural interpretation. It is an issue which reveals the condition of the mind of the one who discusses it more clearly than most specific issues. Homosexuality itself is rather beside the point; what is important is the kind of mind that could be confused about something as obvious and clear cut as this issue is.

Socialist Exegesis and Cheap Grace

Lawrence O'Donnell is a liberal political commentator on MSNBC who in this clip functions as a liberal televangelist. He is a false prophet who, like his master the Devil, expertly twists Scripture to make it sound as if the Bible said the opposite of what it obviously does say. It is enough to make one sympathetic to the calls to get religion out of politics. The real problem is not that orthodox Christians get involved in politics, the problem is that unorthodox liberals are already there doing damage day in and day out.

Don't be put off by the fact that this clip happens to contain an attack on Rush Limbaugh for Rush is incidental to my point here. Plenty of people other than Rush Limbaugh find the liberal Scripture-twisting that obscures the Gospel and co-opts Jesus for some kind of neo-Marxist political agenda to be pernicious. O'Donnell is really attacking all conservative Christians, that is, he is saying that all non-socialist Christians are not real Christians. I confess that Rush Limbaugh is not my idea of a great Scripture scholar, but O'Donnell manages to make Rush look like a veritable John Calvin by comparison.

What makes this clip especially galling is the smug complacency and self-assurance with which O'Donnell speaks. I think he really believes what he is saying and is not in the least ironic or deliberately deceptive. He thinks his lame attempts at exegesis are absolutely knock down arguments that we conservatives never heard before and cannot answer. He reminds me of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion taking three whole pages to refute Thomas Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God - just think, three whole pages!

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Limbaugh said that the left is happy to co-opt Jesus as the first socialist and use him to justify their agenda of state control of everything, but that is the only use they have for Jesus. They are not interested in hearing Jesus on other topics and they twist his words on this topic. Rush is completely correct in this, as we shall see.

Limbaugh replies to the current propaganda slogan being advanced by the Soros-funded, former Evangelical Jim Wallis that the real question is not "What would Jesus cut?" but rather "What would Jesus take?" implying that the socialists are pitting Jesus against the Eighth Commandment and the New Testament against the Old Testament, which they always do. The Socialists think it is fine to break the Eighth Commandment so long as it is done by majority vote and so long as it is done in the name of their great idol: Equality.

Give O'Donnell this much credit: he knows Limbaugh is shooting holes in his whole socialist agenda and he knows it is absolutely crucial to discredit Limbaugh's arguments. He is right about that; the problem is that Limbaugh is right and he is wrong. But since when did that ever stop heretics?

Let's look at the exegesis one passage at a time.

First, we have the story of the rich young ruler. O'Donnell points out that in Mark 10:21 Jesus tells the man to go and sell all his possessions and give to the poor. He then claims that this verse is an answer to the question of how much the government should tax us. Jesus, he says to Limbaugh, "takes" it all - 100%.

Well, how many holes are there in this sophistry. For one thing, Jesus gave the man a choice, something that socialist governments never give citizens. Jesus used no coercion; he called for a free commitment of the will. This is basic to human dignity and moral responsibility. Socialism infantilizes people and deprives them of their basic freedom to act morally by determining what their behavior must be and coercing them into doing whatever the State deems correct.

For another thing, Jesus was not talking about giving all you have to the control of the Government. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. Jesus wants our commitment but we don't follow Jesus by voting socialist and submitting to the dictates of a socialist government; we must follow Jesus only.

O'Donnell stresses that this means "give all of your wealth to the poor, not just some." So this is what he claims the Bible teaches. Fine. Has he given all his wealth to the poor? Has Barack Obama? Joe Biden's income tax return last year showed that he gave 1% of his income to charity. (Obama did a bit better by giving 14% to charity, but he made over 1.7 million!) John Kerry won't even pay the taxes on his yacht let alone sell it and give it to the poor. What blatant hypocrisy and cunning double talk!

Socialists like O'Donnell are people who want the government to take money from other people and give it to the poor. They could just follow their interpretation of the Bible and give their wealth away - but they don't. Instead they want the government to confiscate your wealth and redistribute it while they continue to live the good life.

O'Donnell twists Jesus' words (at 2:25 in the video) saying to sell all that you have and give to the poor into Jesus endorsing a 39.6% income tax rate for those making over $250,000 annually! How does he get that out of the call to evangelical poverty? Wouldn't the people making over $250,000 who paid 39.6% still be "rich?" How, exactly, does remaining rich equal selling everything and giving it to the poor?

O'Donnell then quotes Luke 14:33 where Jesus says that anyone who does not give up everything cannot be my disciple and then says "That means you, Rush." He does not say: "That means me and that is why I have sold all my possessions and given everything to the poor." No, it only applies to conservatives, not to socialists. Confused? Don't be, you are just hung up on Aristotelian logic and need to embrace the Marxist dialectic in which "two legs bad, four legs good."

O'Donnell next continues his little trip through the NT by claiming that Jesus was the first advocate of the progressive income tax! His basis for this? It is Mark 12 and the story of the widow's mite. O'Donnell claims that Jesus saying that she gave more because she gave out of her poverty than those who gave out of their abundance means that the government should make her tax bracket zero and tax rich people at a high rate. Is that what Jesus meant?

Again, she gave voluntarily, which is what made it meritorious in Jesus' eyes. The progressive income tax is not voluntary. And under O'Donnell's socialism, she could not have earned praise from Jesus because she would be classified as a victim and supported by the nanny state. In welfare state liberalism and social democracy private charity dies out. This is by design. Yet, Jesus' words of commendation are twisted into meaning the opposite of what they actually mean. For Jesus, private charity is good; for socialists like O'Donnell it is an evil to be stamped out.

O'Donnell then makes Jesus into a Marxist by saying (4:25) "What would Jesus take? Obviously, he would take from each according to their ability to pay. That is the clear, Christian, philosophical basis of a progressive income tax." Rush is right: Jesus is being co-opted by the Left and people who don't know the Bible very well may well be taken in.

Then at the 6 minute mark, O'Donnell begins reading the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25 and then he basically consigns Limbaugh to hell unless he repents and turns to socialism. And here I thought Marxists didn't even believe in the after life or God or Divine Judgment or hell. I guess they will pretend to believe in anything if they think it will be a useful rhetorical trick to manipulate their audience. They are Sophists and Socrates had them figured out 2,500 years ago. And Jesus would have no time for their hypocrisy. He didn't come to make Caesar Lord. He came to be Ceasar's Lord.

But what is really intriguing about this altar call is that he calls Rush to abandon his opposition to the welfare state and socialist principles. He doesn't single out John Kerry or Obama's Hollywood actor supporters or any other rich Democrat and call them to sell all that they have and give it to the poor. Why not? Well, for O'Donnell they are already saved. They vote Democrat. That is it. That is all you have to do.

I challenge Lawrence O'Donnell to walk the talk and emulate the Rich Young Ruler by selling all that he has and giving it to the rich. When he does that, I will believe that he is at least sincere in his wrong-headed biblical interpretation.

But O'Donnell doesn't think he needs to do that in order to be a follower of Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus means supporting the Left politically and the latest Party edicts will inform you from time to time what this means you must do. Jesus says "Sell it all and give to the poor" but as long as you refrain from attacking the Democratic Party, that is close enough.

This is cheap grace. Break all the Commandments you like. Fornicate, abort, lie, cheat, covet and manipulate. You can even evade taxes! It doesn't matter. All you need to do do is vote the right way and never criticize Socialism or the Great God Equality.

If Rush just switched to supporting the Democratic Party, he could keep his fifty million dollar fortune and O'Donnell would be fine with that. You don't hear O'Donnell naming Oprah or Soros in his altar calls, do you? Want to be filthy rich and still go to heaven? Just get a party card.

Grace doesn't get any cheaper than that.

Inerrancy, Verbal Inspiration and Homosexuality

Al Dobras has a post at Virtue Online, "Reinventing Scripture: Bishop V. Gene Robinson on the Bible and Homosexuality," in which he discusses Gene Robinson's recent efforts to justify homosexuality, divorce etc. from Scripture. If you ever doubted that the conservative Evangelical emphasis on inerrancy and verbal inspiration was important, consider Dobras' summary of Robinson's approach to Scripture.

"In order to justify their lifestyle, homosexual clerics like Bishop Robinson are obsessive about trying to convince people that contemporary understandings of Scripture's position on homosexuality are wrong. To make their case, they invariably resort to convoluted and contradictory lines of reasoning, which they hope will rationalize away what has been considered a seriously deviant behavior for at least the last 3000 years.

Their arguments usually suggest either that the passages used to condemn homosexual practice are misunderstood by modern critics of homosexuality, or conversely, that the ancient writers were not capable of understanding same-sex attraction in the modern sense. When reason fails, the bishop and like-minded apologists also believe that the Bible was not inspired by God, but the scripture reflects the experiences of men in the context of their cultural environment:

I believe the Bible to be the Word of God -- but not the "words" of God. That is, I do not believe that the Bible was dictated by God and written down by scribes of one sort or another, unmediated by the scribes' own life experiences, culture, religious belief and context. [Emphasis added.]


Scripture, therefore, is primarily the writer's opinion as influenced by the culture and any biases he may possess. Consequently, a passage of Scripture must be examined in that context for the true meaning to emerge, no matter how straightforward the text may appear. As the bishop puts it:

What did these words mean to their author?...What did these words mean to the community for which they were written?...Is the message of this text eternally binding on all people of faith, or, has something changed in the context between then and now?

In other words, if one disagrees with the plain text, it can be claimed that the writer was unduly influenced by the culture or that we just do not understand what the writer meant. Perhaps the text simply doesn't apply to the present day. It is with this understanding that Bishop Robinson examined what he calls "texts of terror" used against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people."

Conservative Evangelicals have been arguing for a century now that, in rejecting a crude dictation theory, we must be very careful not to deny the inspiration of the very words of Scripture. Even though the Holy Spirit worked through the personality, minds and experiences of the biblical writers, the text as it stands is still the inspired Word of God and not merely human opinion. Its Divine origin is the basis of its authority and when Divine inspiration is watered down - when it is reduced to 'the writer's opinion' - the authority disappears and the text becomes a wax nose.

The details of how Robinson evades the plain sense of the text in one case after another are not as important as his methodological rejection of the Divine inspiration and authority of the text. He sets himself up as the authority over the text and set about to decide which bits are ancient prejudices and which are relevant truths for us. In so doing, he has, in practice, rejected Divine inspiration and Divine authority. In so doing, he has placed himself outside the apostolic tradition and, indeed, outside the Church's teaching authority. It is all about nothing more than his personal preferences. But this is nothing other than the liberal rejection of verbal inspiration and inerrancy in action.

Evangelicals and the Recovery of a Sacramental Ontology

Timothy George has a wonderful essay in First Things on biblical interpretation entitled: "Reading the Bible with the Reformers." It is far too long, complex and rich to summarize in a blog post, but I would just like to highlight a couple of what were for me high points because they confirm the direction in which my own thought has been going recently.

First, George sees linkage between Evangelical pietistic reading of the Bible and the "participatory exegesis" of the Church Fathers as recovered in current theology by Matthew Levering, Hans Boersma and the Ressourcement theologians of the first half of the 20th century.

"The post-Enlightenment split between the study of the Bible as an academic discipline and the reading of the Bible as spiritual nurture was as foreign to the reformers as it was to theologians and Christian scholars in prior centuries. They all repudiated the idea that the Bible could be studied and understood with dispassionate objectivity, as a cold artifact from antiquity. The Cambridge scholar Thomas Bilney discovered the meaning of salvation while reading Erasmus’ new Latin translation of 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” He did not remember the moment as one of scholarly insight; instead, he reported that “immediately I felt a marvelous comfort and quietness insomuch that my bruised bones leaped for joy.”

The reformers practiced what Matthew Levering has called “participatory biblical exegesis” in which the intimate “vertical” presence of the Trinity’s creative and redemptive action suffuses the “linear” or “horizontal” succession of moments. According to Levering, “To enter into the realities taught in the biblical text requires not only linear-historical tools (archeology, philology, and so forth), but also, and indeed primarily, participatory tools—doctrines and practices—by which the exegete enters fully into the biblical world.” Bilney’s experience led to his becoming an evangelist and eventually one of the first martyrs of the English Reformation."

This brief reference to Levering (whose book Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame Press, 2008) is very important) only hints at the growing movement of Ressourcement in Catholic and now in Evangelical circles. Two excellent books by Hans Boersma, an evangelical teaching at Regent College, are of importance here. First there is his study of the Nouvelle Theologie, Nouvelle Theologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford, 2009) and Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Eerdmans, 2011).

The reason these books are so important is that they are challenging the entire modern worldview; that is, they are recovering the common Christian tradition of the first 1500 years of the Church in which the biblical doctrine of God generated a distinctively Christian metaphysics. The Bible itself demands to be read in the context of this distinctively Christian metaphysics and when it is read in the modern, materialistic, secularized metaphysics it becomes a dead letter. Read in the context of what Boersma helpfully terms a "sacramental ontology," it becomes alive and life transforming.

Yes Virginia, piety and metaphysics do have something to do with one another and the fruitful interaction between Evangelical and Catholic scholars who have rejected liberal theology as dead and useless is increasingly exciting.

One other snippet from George's excellent article deserves highlighting:

Postmodern hermeneutics, left to itself, devolves into relativism, fragmentation, and subjective perspectivism, a trajectory that challenges the historic Christian understanding of language as a reliable medium of truth. Yet postmodernism unmasks the pretentions of an exaggerated individualism and the overweening confidence in reason that has shaped the historical-critical method of studying the Bible. It has also emphasized the relational character of knowledge and the role of the community (for Christians, the Church) in interpretation, as well as the situatedness (language, gender, culture, and historical particularity) of every interpreter. A reader cannot presume to possess authoritative and fail-safe methods to deliver impersonal truths. In this sense, postmodernism calls for us to recognize our limitations, our finitude.

As it turns out, many of the habits of reading suggested by postmodernism are already deeply embedded in the Christian tradition, not least in the hermeneutical legacy of the Protestant Reformation. In a bold and important study, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics, Jens Zimmermann has argued that the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment was anticipated by major themes in the biblical and theological work of the reformers. Three themes stand out.

The first concerns the interrelated and existentially involving reality of truth. The famous opening lines of Calvin’s Institutes declares that “nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” These two kinds of knowledge are simultaneous and correlative. It is not as though one could gain a thorough knowledge of the self by earning a Ph.D., say, in psychology, and then transfer to a divinity school to pursue the knowledge of God. No, at every step of the way, and in every area of life, we are confronted by a seeming contradiction: genuine knowledge of ourselves drives us to look at God, and at the same time any real grasp of ourselves presupposes that we have already contemplated Him.

In this respect Calvin anticipates later postmodern theorists. As a pre-Cartesian thinker he did not presume that the act of knowledge involves a singular thinking subject that surveys an external world of extended stuff. Calvin knew that the human mind, left to itself, would become a “factory of idols” producing self-made gods of darkness and delusion, which is why a true interpretation of the Bible required the inward witness of the Holy Spirit. There is no independent epistemological platform on which we may stand and objectively survey our theological options. In every act of understanding, as in every moment of life, we all have “business with God” ( negotium cum Deo). As Zimmermann notes, for Calvin, “the whole purpose of reading Scripture is the restoration of our humanity to the fullness of the image of God in us as individuals and in society as a whole.” To know is to participate.

What is so exciting about this passage is the way in which George understands postmodernism to be merely the dead end of modernity. It is not the beginning of something new and better, just the death rattles of an old and tired rebellion against the Christian worldview. Whatever postmodernism has (finally) admitted to be necessary and right in interpretation was there in classical Christian biblical interpretation all along, although it had been rejected by modernity in its fatal turn to the autonomous subject.

The difference between postmodern hermeneutics and classical Christian hermeneutics (participatory biblical exegesis) is that the latter generated and embedded itself in a sacramental ontology, that is, a distinctively Christian metaphysics that grew out of the Christian doctrine of God that arose in the first five centuries of the Christian era as the Fathers struggled to express the Biblical Gospel faithfully in their Greco-Roman context.

This is why classical Christian interpretation has a future and postmodern hermeneutics is a dead end. Modernity has had a good run; George dates it from the collapse of the Bastille in 1789 to the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001. But despite its mammoth technological achievements, this culture of modernity has failed. Radical Islamists sense the weakness and are inspired to dream of conquest. The signs of the culture of death are omnipresent in the West. Materialism has destroyed the spirit. The New Atheists are anything but avant garde; the real question is not "Can we any longer believe in God?" but rather "Can we any longer believe in man?" God is dead, man is dead and only the last men remain as some rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem.

Evangelicals and Catholics need to join hands in order to plumb the rich treasures of classical Christian theology and philosophy in order to build a new culture in which the Bible can be read as a living, breathing Word from God and which the beautiful sacramental ontology of the first millennium can be recovered as the basis of a worldview in which God permeates culture, nature and the human imagination once again.

Timothy George's magnificent article is a step in that direction.

A Reasonable Definition of Reason

From Nouvelle Theologie, comes an excellent article on the role of reason in Biblical study.

"In a previous post, I noted that Catholic art and music, liturgy, prayer, theology, ethics, and canon law have a tremendous Scriptural depth to them — everything in Catholic culture has been profoundly formed by Scripture even if this reality too often remains implicit.

At the explicit level, however, there are problems. That is, when Catholics deliberately study the Bible, they run up against difficulties. In my experience, these difficulties stem from the traditional Catholic teaching that faith is reasonable combined with the uncritical acceptance of an untraditonal notion of reason that is rationalistic and scientistic.

Fr. Giussani expresses the traditional approach to reason succinctly: "the capacity to become aware of reality according to the totality of its factors. The term reasonableness, then, represents a mode of action that expresses and realizes reason, the capacity to become aware of reality" (The Religious Sense, 12). By contrast, reason in its novel and commonplace sense of the word refers narrowly to one or another of the roads (methods) that the human capacity of reason takes in order to come to an awareness of reality.

To confuse this or that method with reason itself is an unreasonable position."

I wonder if, using this definition of "reason," it would be correct to understand the common approach to the academic study of the Bible using the historical critical method exclusively (as occurs, for example, in most university and seminary classrooms) as being unreasonable. I would think so. This post goes on to say:

"The problem I have seen in years of adult education, Catholic Bible study, and in university theology classes is the dominance of one or another of these narrow methods. In my undergrad "Christ in Scriptures" class, we studied three Gospels using the historical-critical method alone.

We learned a great deal about the cultural context of the Gospels and about their philological texture, but any other way of understanding the Gospels was outside the scope of the class. We were left with a pastiche of hypotheses and opinions, and I asked my professor: "where is Christ?" As a professor, she did not want to impose faith on her students, not all of whom were Catholic. She did not seem too interested in proposing Christ to them either. This was not a reasonable approach . . ."

Exactly. This problem, of course, is not limited to Catholic institutions of higher learning nor to the liberal ones from which it came; Evangelical institutions struggle with this sort of unreasonable teaching in a bid for "respectablility" and "approval" from secular liberals. What a waste of time and effort that is. At Tyndale University College we struggle with being academic and faithful, but I think we get it right to a greater degree than most. Students regularly come out of class having been challenged by an encounter with Christ mediated by the text. That is education worth sacrificing for and education that makes a difference. And that seems reasonable.