For some time now I have had a running debate with one of my
beloved fraternity brothers, Joe Deutschman, on that poor mechanism for such
debates called Facebook. This relates to
how Christians see, use, and/or understand the Old Testament, and its necessity
as a part of the canon. Joe, a
non-believer, has several very ignorant misconceptions about this, and I again
tried to enlighten him. I have opted to
change mediums, because the discussion on Facebook will not do us service.
The most recent give and take started with re-sharing of a
post by Mark Rowden that I preamble as such:
“The apostasy of the literalist fundamentalist reading of the collection
of books, letters, narratives, and stories we have come to call the Bible,
continues to plague believers and especially nonbelievers. Thanks for this reminder and explanation of
the truth of the matter.” Here is the
post in question by Mark: https://www.facebook.com/mark.rowden.12/posts/6569646289782477.
To that, Joe wrote the following: “This is why I've never understood why
Christianity keeps the Old and New Testaments together in one book. Given what
the faith is professed to believe, wouldn't it make more sense to have the New
Testament be "The Bible", the main text of the religion, and the Old
Testament be kept around as a reference text?”
To this I provide an analogy to the relationship between the
US Constitution and the corpus of English/British law that preceded it, to how
the Old Testament relates to the New Testament as the progenitor and necessary
context to understand the scriptures fully.
Eventually, Joe stipulates that, “We [Americans in the Constitution] included
specific terms and concepts, not every single one. Nowhere in the US
Constitution did we say "reference the Magna Carta for anything not
explicitly covered here", which is exactly what Christianity did with the
Old Testament - "If it's not directly contradicted in the New Testament,
the Old Testament is still the [religious] law".
To this I have responded:
“Joe Deutschman where in Christianity does it say “if it’s not directly
contradicted in the New Testament, the Old Testament is still the [religious]
law.”?
Answer: nowhere. That is a completely wrong understanding of
the place of the Old Testament in relationship to Christianity or scripture at
large. Clearly you’ve got to spend much more time actually studying and
understanding what is and is not a part of said faith and the place of the writ
within them.
My analogy is exceptionally apt. There are those that have
mistakenly disabused how the Old Testament is to be understood and used within
Christianity. Those exceptions, however, doesn’t make that false understanding
true. This is akin to certain people who hold to completely fraudulent
understandings of the US Constitution, most recently as it relates to electoral
college vote certification, for instance.”
At this point, Joe has most recently responded with the
following:
“Maybe that's not how you view it or personally believe, but
looking at it objectively for the religion as a whole you are wrong (and the
majority of American Christians clearly disagree as well, given their political
actions). Below is an image of the most common Bible used in the US. This is
the formal "holy book" recognized as the foundation of the religion
by the majority of American Christians. It is the book preachers use day-in and
day-out for their sermons. Any verse from any part of the book. Today maybe
they're preaching from the Book of Luke. Tomorrow maybe from Psalms. It is the
book passed out to youth, it is the book kept in the pews. Absolutely nowhere
is it written "second half is what matters, first half is just there for
historical reference". No preacher starts a sermon with "today we're
using a verse from the Old Testament, so it's not as important/literal/whatever
as yesterday's sermon from the New Testament." The two halves are given
equal credence in that book. Until Christian sects segregate the Old Testament
and formally declare it to not be given equal credence to the New Testament, it
will continue to have equal effect and impact.
Meanwhile, I have never once seen an instance of the US
Constitution published with the Magna Carta alongside it. So no, the fact that
the NT and OT are almost always published together, and the Constitution/Magna
Carta are not, makes your analogy fail.”
It is at this point where I am picking up in this discussion with this post.
Joe,
Since you have decided to literally judge a book (or more accurately
an anthology/compendium of books, letters, legends/myths/moral stories, poetry,
histories, prophetic texts, apocalypses, and other literature) by its cover, I
have had to turn to a medium that is more appropriate to respond. What has become exceptionally clear to me is
that while you hold this strongly held opinion, it is based on a false
foundation. I don’t blame you entirely,
because popular culture has aided and abetted in this willful ignorance, but I
just cannot let you remain as such, especially in a relationship where truth,
caring, and being “of good heart” must prevail.
I will do this in a point by point manner related to your last response
to me, so as to be forthright in how I approach this discussion.
Let me first start with your opening sentence, namely: “Maybe that's not how you view it or
personally believe, but looking at it objectively for the religion as a whole
you are wrong (and the majority of American Christians clearly disagree as
well, given their political actions).” So you are invoking what the
understanding is of the Old Testament related to the New Testament “objectively
for the religion as a whole”. Well,
let’s get straight what the make-up of the “religion as a whole is”.
First, the religion as a whole has a population in excess of
2 billion persons globally.[1] Of that population, 62% are part of Catholic
or Orthodox expressions of the faith, with Protestants representing
approximately 37% of the world’s Christian population, or about 740 million
persons.[2] Orthodox and Catholic expressions have some
very specific ways that they understand scripture, especially as it relates to
how the Old Testament is to be understood in light of the New Testament, as
well as having large corpuses of extra biblical literature to draw on for
specific teachings that are considered on par with the Bible (aka Sacred
Tradition) that further aid in how this is done. They also require, in their liturgies and in
their preaching, that there be a reading from the Old Testament, a reading or
chanting from the Psalms, a reading from the epistles (e.g. letters) of the New
Testament, and conclude with a reading from the Gospels. Guidance is clear that the process of speaking
to scriptures by priests is to use the Gospel lesson as the primary guide to
understand and ruminate on the other readings which are paired and sequenced
for every service offered in a deliberate way in what is called a lectionary. This lectionary is not optional and not open
to modification on whims, excepting approvals by higher levels of hierarchy
which require good justification. Point
being, just from this point alone, yea, there is a much more clear understanding
that ay given word, phrase, story, etc. in the Old Testament is not “equal to”
any given word, phrase, story, etc. in the New Testament, for more than half of
the world’s believers, looking at it “objectively
for the religion as a whole”.
But to bring the point home even further, within the
Protestant ranks there is less strict rules of the road, but even then, for the
vast majority, they have a clear heuristic approach to the Bible that
preferences the use of the New Testament
to interpret and understand the Old Testament, a mechanism often entitled
“scripture interprets scripture”. Most
also follow what is called the common lectionary (akin to the Orthodox and
Catholic, but leaving out certain non-biblical festivals and celebrations) that
necessitate that heuristic being applied in preaching regularly. As indicated by Pew Research, approximately
13.1% of the world’s Christian population (or 285 million persons) is
“Evangelical”.[3] It is in these ranks that you are finding the
folks you are talking about that “…[t]oday maybe they're preaching from the
Book of Luke. Tomorrow maybe from Psalms.”
And even within evangelical circles the approach can be more or less
akin to what you’ve implied is that case, meaning that is it is a small
minority that would even try to say that one should use the Old Testament as
a manner to interpret the New rather than vice versa, “objectively for the
religion as a whole”.
But, you then go on to cite and criticize within the
American context. If you look at that
landscape, of the various groups with 1 million or more members (representing
some 113 million American Christians), only 25.4 million America Christians
could fit into the “Evangelical” bracket as you are using it (in a very liberal
use of the term, meaning this is over counting the likely number that are).[4] That is 22.4% of Americas, max. Meaning that clearly, “majority of American
Christians” don’t disagree with me in how the Bible is approached”. But you have appended this with “given their
political actions”. Well that is an
interesting statement, as this charts show, Christians in their political
persuasion are more or less evenly split:[5]
Point being, that if you are implying that Christians,
because in your estimation a majority, are using the Old Testament as a reason
to prescribe radically reactionary policies, the data, facts, do not bear you
out. Rather, the data, facts, show that
the vast majority get that the Old Testament is to be interpreted in light of
the New Testament and used as the context to understand said interpretative
responses and proclamations. What you
are in error about is what you see as a loud, galvanized, and very politically
active minority that is punching over it weight in places like you live because
they’ve brought along or have gone in league with non-believing conservatives
that happen to like the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” provisions in the
Old Testament, even if they are not Christians themselves.
With that part settled, let me take on the next claim you
make: “Below is an image of the most
common Bible used in the US [the King James Version]. This is the formal
"holy book" recognized as the foundation of the religion by the
majority of American Christians. It is the book preachers use day-in and
day-out for their sermons. Any verse from any part of the book. Today maybe
they're preaching from the Book of Luke. Tomorrow maybe from Psalms. It is the
book passed out to youth, it is the book kept in the pews.”
First, I will commend that you indeed know the most common
read version of the Bible in the US.[8] But here is the thing, even at 31% saying
they use the King James Version (KJV), over 61% use a different version. Did you know that for the 51 million Catholic
Americans, they utilize a different canon for the Old Testament than do the Protestants
(and thus don’t use the KJV as a result)?
And for Protestant groups like Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCC, and some
others that they have those extra books in the bible as “Apocrypha” or
“Deuterocanonical” texts that are included as additional materials, akin to an
annex? And do you have any idea how many
commentaries, exploratory discussion texts, or historical context books are
available to help guide and inform preachers, never mind those that study or
read the Bible? And you’d be massively
surprised to hear that the Bible volume itself is complete absent from most
Catholic, Episcopal, and many Presbyterian and Lutheran church pews in the US,
as the verses for the day are either printed in a “missal” or in the bulletin,
for easier access during the worship services.
Point is yup, it’s a book in common usage, the Bible. And yes it is “foundational”, but only as
much as many other things in life.
Preachers don’t just rely on the text of the Bible itself, and use many
other resources. And, as I articulated
above, most don’t get the choice either by mandate or by normative practice to
choose what they get to preach on, as the lectionary is prescribed for
them. They don’t get to choose to preach
from “[a]ny verse from any part of the book”, they have to wrestle with an
contend with several verses that are meant to convey a thread and/or larger
moral concept that can and does get drawn out from those passages, using a
specific “lens”.
This brings me to your next claim that “Absolutely nowhere
is it written "second half is what matters, first half is just there for
historical reference". No preacher starts a sermon with "today we're
using a verse from the Old Testament, so it's not as important/literal/whatever
as yesterday's sermon from the New Testament." The two halves are given
equal credence in that book.”
So this is where you are so dead wrong, again thanks to
complete and utter biblical ignorance (to which I pray you actually read the
Bible and see what it actually says instead of presuming to know what it says). Let me start with what Jesus himself says
about where the Old Testament, the scriptures of his time, and what it says
about faith, life and more, in relation to what he, as the center nexus point,
was to them. When asked about the old
Law, Jesus himself states how it is to be viewed: “‘You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40). As he made clear, the Old Testament
strictures on particulars are not what matters, it is understanding the core
moral ethic behind those strictures, centers on this very interpretation.[9] For this reason, Christians are not to just
read the Bible as if every part of it is equal, but we are to read the
scriptures, especially the Old Testament, through “the lens of Jesus” (e.g. read
it as if we did so through Jesus eyes).[10] And later writers push this even more, that
“when there seems to be a conflict between Old Testament laws and New Testament
principles, we must follow the New Testament because it represents the most
recent and most perfect revelation from God (Hebrews 8:13, 2 Corinthians
3:1-18, Galatians 2:15-20).”[11] This article in particular lays this very
well, with extensive citations: https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_OldTestamentLaw.htm. Paul of Tarsus, in particular, articulates
much of this very important understanding in his letter to the Romans (Chapter
2 through 13:10) where he comes back to the same summary that Christ himself
offers in the quote above.
Lastly, you stipulate that “[u]ntil Christian sects
segregate the Old Testament and formally declare it to not be given equal
credence to the New Testament, it will continue to have equal effect and
impact.”
So, succinctly, we (Christians) already “segregate the Old
Testament” (its in its own section and distinctly understood in the canon as a
separate and distinct). Jesus himself
declared it to “not be given equal credence to the New Testament” (in that he
declared he was the one that was the ultimate interpreter of the Old Testament
for all times (and was ultimately killed for making such bold claims), and the
New Testament is a recording of his proclamations and life as well as letters
then went on to give further heft and depth to that declaration). So bottom line, you simply have an erroneous
assumption or a great strawman you have created for yourself to bluster and
beat on. That strawman is that you
continue to believe that Christians, give equal credence and thus a resulting
“equal effect and impact” between the two Testaments in the Bible. That simply, as demonstrated, not just by my
opinion, but the statements by the religion’s very founder and further
extensively cited works, that you are wrong to continue to hold this opinion. This is an objective analysis of what the
religion of Christianity actually says about itself and its “holy writ”.
Lastly, and as a complete rabbit hole you seem to want to go
down on this topic, I actually have a book somewhere that has numerous
documents foundational to liberal constitutional republican democracy that
included the Magna Carta along with things like the Treaty of Westphalia, up to
and including the US Constitution (it admittedly skips over a bunch of things,
and is a rather incomplete text/anthology/compendium in that regard). But the fact they are in one printed book or
not, was not the point I made in my analogy.
The analogy was how English/British legal and governmental traditions
and concepts (among them the Magna Carta, but a whole host of other things too)
were necessary and a full part of how we understand the US Constitution, the
Declaration of Independence and much more; to the point that SCOTUS justices
continue to use case law and decisions in pre-independence courts in
contemporaneous decisions (e.g. Dobbs).
Your utter fixation and fetishizing on the fact that the Bible
publishers have conveniently put into one volume the
precedent/background/contextual documentation for the latter part of the book
instead of separating them physically, has led you to a) a bad strawman
understanding of the biblical corpus and b) falsely understanding the very
parallel comparison I made to our foundational documents. Yes, most folks don’t try to put in one
volume the better part of western political thought/jurisprudence from
Justinian’s Codex to Four Freedom’s Speech by Roosevelt, because that would be
one massive book that wouldn’t be humanly possible to pick up. In the case of the Bible, however, one can do
so, but it doesn’t mean that there’s equal credence to each part or that there
isn’t an interpretive aspect of how you read the older part relative to the
newer/current understanding any more or less than we do so in our current
socio-political context. But again, this
is a sidebar intended to help you understand how Christianity understands the
Old Testament as it relates to the New Testament, and not to get into a rabbit
hole debate of whether the Magna Carta was ever printed in the same physical
book as the US Constitution or whether there is an explicit reference to the
Magna Carta as a whole in the US Constitution or other foundational document,
even as we still hold fast to principles that originate in that 13th
century document.
So with all this, I hope I am putting to bed some serious
misunderstandings/ignorance that has pervaded our conversations on this
topic. I ask you just get over the “because
its in one book, they are equal things” false presumption about the Old and New
Testaments in the Bible, as the vast majority of Christianity understand its holy
scriptures. Yes, there are those outliers
that are akin to the Pharisees who fall back into the trap of emphasizing the
old law found in the Old Testament, over the explicit directives of the one
they profess to follow. That is why I
have come to call them pseudo-Christians, because they use the labels of what
Christianity uses, but applies them in the opposite way from what they are
often explicitly meant to mean. You may be
around a lot of those folks and I will be blunt that they are over boisterous
and over hyped (often because of the way it sells in the media). But that doesn’t make it the mainstream, majority
or even right understanding if you actually engage with the texts themselves. You really need to do so, engage with the
Bible, if you are going to continue to claim to be making an objective claim
about a religious group that you are not a member of. I can promise you that reading the Bible will
not force you in any way to believe what is written or the God that is being
discussed and struggled with to understand.
You may opt to, but you may also, like Dr. Bart Ehrman, remain an
atheist/agnostic, but with a much more educated appreciation for Christianity
and the various claims made within and without that religion.
Thanks.
IUAT,
Erik
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid
[6]
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/christians/christian#party-affiliation
[7]
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/christians/christian#political-ideology
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