Chapter 3: The Fundamentalist “Majority”

Chapter 3: The Fundamentalist “Majority” (the proposed, new chapter)

This chapter begins by introducing the origins of American fundamentalism in the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the early twentieth century. Key is the role fundamentalism has been playing in American politics. The section describes how fundamentalism has only partially adopted the idea of reading in context because it still treats the Bible as a single book (American Fundamentalism).

The second section accordingly spells out how the differing contexts of the Bible’s books mean that they do not use words or concepts the same ways (Different Books, Different Contexts). A third section uses the Left Behind series as a test case, showing how this series consistently splices together texts whose original meanings did not fit together originally (Left Behind Adventures). The final section wonders if God is so beyond understanding that we can only understand God by way of irreconcilable paradoxes (The Ineffable God).

· American Fundamentalism

· Different Books, Different Contexts

· Left Behind Adventures

· The Ineffable God

Chapter 3

When Church Groups Decide (old chapter)

Denominational Glasses

A denomination is a collection of individual churches with some sort of common organization or belief. So while all Baptists have some things in common, there are a number of Baptist denominations: Southern Baptist, American Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Free Will Baptists, etc. Different groups like these usually have come from some common group at some point in the past and have “split”—sometimes more than once—because of some disagreement over belief or practice.

Some of these church contentions seem somewhat ridiculous in hindsight, like groups who have argued over the color of the bumper on their cars (Black Bumper Mennonites), not to mention those who thought it wrong to have a car in the first place (Amish). Groups have split over whether you should use instruments in the church (Christian Church) or whether a person should be baptized forward or backward, certainly by immersion. Hair length and jewelry have played their role, even whether you had to lease your seat in the church (Free Methodist).

Groups like these usually have highly developed “dictionaries” that they use when they are reading the Bible. When a Baptist brings a Baptist “dictionary” to the Bible, we shouldn’t be surprised if s/he “finds” Baptist meanings. The same is true of a Catholic, Methodist, or Lutheran.[1] We all have a tendency to focus on verses that our tradition has selected and defined in our favor.

This process does not always take place consciously. For example, the Methodist tradition lays almost no emphasis on the idea of predestination—the idea that God has already decided who will become a Christian and arranged their destinies accordingly. Instead, this tradition tends to emphasize that anyone can become a Christian of his or her own free will. The result is that Methodists generally read right past the many places in the New Testament where the Bible uses language of “calling” and “election” (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:2). It is not necessarily anyone’s intention to ignore such verses; they just don’t come up on a Methodist’s radar screen. On the other hand, a good Presbyterian will pick up on this language every time.

We see the dictionaries of various groups constantly at work as they read the Bible. For example, someone from the United Pentecostal Church will probably hear overtones of speaking in tongues every time the New Testament refers to a Christian having the Holy Spirit. This church believes that speaking in “spiritual” languages is a sign of having God’s Spirit within you, something that all true Christians demonstrate. So while the vast majority of instances where the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Bible do not mention tongues, someone from the UPC will infer that tongues is always implied.

I myself was raised in a church that in part grew out of the “holiness revivals” of the late nineteenth century.[2] This movement emphasized an experience a Christian could and should have at some point after being a Christian. This experience, called “entire sanctification,” involved the removal or successful suppression of the part of you that makes you want to sin. The result was a life in which a person became “perfect” in love and at least potentially sinless in intent for the rest of his or her life.

When I was a teenager, I read through the Bible and highlighted in orange all the verses I came across that mentioned words like “holiness,” “holy,” “sanctification,” etc. Using my holiness “dictionary,” all references of this kind immediately triggered in my mind the full blown doctrine of entire sanctification taught by my church.[3] Then as I worked my way through college and seminary, I began to look for a place where this understanding of sanctification was clearly spelled out. I slowly realized that there was no one place where the Bible laid out this doctrine in the form I had learned it. Rather my tradition had pieced its teaching together from various items found here and there. In other words, I could only find the full blown doctrine in a text if I came to it with my church’s definition of holiness and sanctification already in hand.

It is of course always easier to see the “denominational glasses” of other groups, the idiosyncratic beliefs that color the interpretations of denominations other than our own. It is much harder to see our own glasses and biases. A Lutheran can see more easily than a Baptist that the New Testament never engages in any debate over the way a person is baptized. A Catholic can see more easily than a Lutheran that Paul affirmed the importance of good works in the life of a Christian. And a Protestant can see more easily than a Catholic that Mary most likely went on to have other children after Jesus was born.

One factor that complicates matters is that you can almost always find some verse that at least sounds like it supports your position. Even those Protestants who first argued so strongly that the Bible’s meaning is clear[4] also recognized that some passages are more difficult to understand than others. They believed the message was clear with regard to “everything necessary for salvation.” When we find something that is unclear, they believed we should use the “clear” verses to interpret the “unclear” ones: “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

You can almost always find some verse that at least sounds like it supports your church’s position.

The very real practical problem with this approach is of course to figure out which verses are the “clear” ones and which ones are the “unclear” ones.[5] The history of Protestantism especially shows that Christian groups frequently disagree on which is which. For example, take the question of whether women should be ministers or not. It would be wrong to assume that everyone who believes that the Bible is without error will oppose women in ministry. There are any number of very conservative Christian groups who have female ministers.[6]

Those who oppose women in ministry consider the teaching of 1 Cor. 14:34-35 and 1 Tim. 2:12-15 to be the “clear” teaching. Corinthians says “women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says” (1 Cor. 14:34). Timothy says, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (1 Tim. 2:12). What could be clearer teaching than we have here, the Southern Baptist says.

But what do we make of Acts 2:17, says the Wesleyan: “[Y]our sons and daughters shall prophesy.” What of the spiritual principle of Gal. 3:28: “there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”? What of the fact that we see Priscilla instructing Apollos in Acts 18:26 and Phoebe having a prominent role in the church of Cenchrea (Rom. 16:10). Junia may actually have been a second order apostle (Rom. 16:7)? The verses you consider to be “clear” will usually turn out to be the ones that most benefit the position of your group.

The issue of homosexuality makes this point in an emphatic way. Most Christian groups assume that verses like Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9; and 1 Tim. 1:10 make it overwhelmingly clear that the Bible is opposed to the practice of homosexual sex. But a visit to the website of the Metropolitan Community Church makes it clear that 1) there are practicing homosexuals who believe that the Bible is authoritative and 2) these individuals do not believe that the verses above address a monogamous homosexual relationship.

Some of the reasons for such disagreements should be fairly clear by now. While it is possible that such disagreements sometimes come from spiritual problems, a more basic cause is the potential ambiguity of words. Words without a clear context are highly flexible in their meaning. The context we bring to them, the “dictionary” we bring to the words, completely and utterly determines the meaning we find in them. We can almost always find some words in Scripture that come out the way we want them to when we are using the dictionary of our church group.

But even when we come to the words with our own dictionary, we also will almost always find verses that don’t sound the way I want them to. No one’s dictionary is completely made up of idiosyncratic meanings—I absorb a great deal of my dictionary from my broader culture. I call verses that don’t fit as neatly into my religious viewpoint “naughty” verses.

Almost every way of looking at the world has some “kinks” to work out, problem data that doesn’t fit neatly into my viewpoint. Science works this way. Almost every scientific paradigm or theory has problems that scientists are trying to work out.[7] It is usually only after repeated attempts to account for a certain problem, to explain some “naughty data” that doesn’t fit the paradigm, that another scientist, often a younger one, might begin to wonder whether a new theory needs to be developed.

There will always be verses that at least sound like they are in tension with the positions of your group, “naughty” verses. Such verses are deemphasized and redefined so that they do not interfere with the group’s overall “paradigm,” its way of processing the world.

Even then such a scientist often faces strong opposition from the majority who still favor the prevailing theory. Such a person may have difficulty getting his or her work published at first. It is only if the new theory gains momentum—and of course the other scientists die off—that a scientific revolution is ensured success.

The ideological frameworks by which we process the Bible’s teaching function similarly to scientific paradigms. Our perspectives on religious truth are persistent and generally resist change. The natural tendency is to ignore the “naughty data” and focus primarily on the words that come to have the meanings most favorable to our thinking when we bring our “dictionary” to bear on them. Almost inevitably, these “clear” passages are the ones you will hear preached regularly from the pulpits of the denomination. The person in the pew may not even be aware of the naughty ones.

Of course other processes are also at work. From time to time someone will focus on the “naughty data” in one way or another. Such a person may work to reform the denomination or, if unsuccessful, may leave it. If the person has simply brought his or her own idiosyncratic “dictionary” to the text, he or she may form a new group. Such a group will tend to be sectarian and divisive in nature, sometimes even cultish.

On the other hand, if the naughty data exposes what are already idiosyncratic views of the denomination, the person may leave the church for a more mainstream group. Unless the group as a whole has been moving in the same direction, such individuals are bound to face strong opposition from the group, perhaps even “de-Christianization.” On the whole, groups tend to become more mainstream over time, often considered a “liberalization” of the denomination. At some point in that process we will often find smaller groups splitting off of the parent group. These groups usually wish to retain or recapture the denomination’s original teaching and fervor, to return to the group’s earlier “dictionary.”

Different Books, Different Contexts

We have described some of the dynamics involved in how churches “select” and “deselect” various verses in Scripture as an expression of their identity. Perhaps every church group has favorite verses that they define in a way that reinforces who they are. At the same time there will always be verses that at least sound like they are in tension with the positions of the group, “naughty” verses. Such verses are deemphasized and redefined so that they do not interfere with the group’s overall “paradigm,” their way of processing the world.

The Bible is more like a library of books than a single book.

One factor that aggravates the problem is the fact that the Bible is made up of so many different books from so many different contexts. In contrast, many Christians and Christian groups interpret the Bible as if it were a single book. True, the Bible looks like a single book when I buy it at the bookstore today. But it was not a single book originally. The Bible is actually a collection of dozens of books that only began to circulate together as a whole hundreds of years after they were first written.[8] When I look at the Bible, I am looking at a library of books rather than a single one. Most Protestant Bibles have sixty-six books in them. Roman Catholic Bibles have several others, and Orthodox Bibles even more.

The material in these books came into existence over a period of as much as a thousand years. These books were written in three different languages in several different regions of the ancient world. Each book used words in the same ways that its specific author and audience used them—otherwise the message wouldn’t have made any sense to those for whom these books were actually written. When I view the Bible as a single book, my context becomes the unifying context for the words. Perhaps inadvertently, I lift the words out of their specific and diverse original contexts and read them in terms of my unified one.

For example, many Christians interpret Revelation 22:18-19 as a warning not to add or take away anything from the Bible: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

Since these words come at the end of the Bible as it is currently “packaged,” it is only natural that many Christians take it as a reference to the whole Bible. After all, it comes in the last chapter. Many interpret these verses to mean that anyone who adds to the Bible will be cursed while anyone who takes away from the Bible will lose their reward.

Reading the Bible as a single book leads us to read it consistently out of context.

But now we reflect that Revelation was first written as a self-contained book on an individual scroll. Indeed, Christians did not universally agree that it should even be considered Scripture until the 300’s and 400’s. Clearly these two verses originally referred only to the book of Revelation itself. Perhaps we can apply the statement to the other books of the Bible as well. But once we make this move, we have loosed the meaning from its mooring and allowed the text to take on meanings beyond the literal.

2 Timothy 3:16 is often quoted as the Bible’s claim to be inspired: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Psalm 119:105 similarly says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Both these verses are regularly taken in reference to the entire Bible.

Perhaps it appropriate for Christians to read these verses in this way. But at the same time notice the subtle way in which we have changed the meanings of these verses from what they originally meant. The Scriptures that Timothy would have learned from his infancy were the Old Testament, not the whole Bible. Some of the books of the New Testament certainly existed at the time of 2 Timothy, but they were not the Scriptures in view here. In context, 2 Timothy referred to the Jewish Scriptures, which Christians call the “Old Testament.”

Psalm 119:105 similarly referred originally to the Pentateuch or Jewish law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Surely the whole Bible is a light for us, but this was not the original meaning of the psalm. Not a single book of the New Testament was written at the time of this psalm. By reading the verse in the light of the whole Bible we have created a new meaning for the verse. We have changed the definition of God’s “word” by changing the context against which we read the verse.

We could produce countless examples of Christians introducing concepts from one part of the Bible into another, ideas we would not otherwise see in the verses themselves. On the one hand, it is not clear to me that reading the Bible this way is ultimately a bad thing. After all, this process reflects the idea that “Scripture interprets Scripture,” an idea that historically has been used by both Protestants and Catholics alike.[9] It is the way that most Christians have read the Bible throughout the ages to one degree or another.

But at the same time it is clear that this practice results in interpretations that are different from what these books actually meant originally. In other words, we read the Bible in this way at the expense of hearing accurately what Paul really meant—or Matthew or Isaiah. When you change the context and definitions of the words, you change the way they are used and thus you change the meaning of the words.

We should not be surprised to find that different books of the Bible use words differently. Even within the United States we find regional terms and phrases, like whether you drink “pop,” “soda,” or “a Coke”—even when it isn’t a Coke. Do you use a “vacuum,” a “sweeper,” or if you are in England, a “Hoover”? Even individuals have their favorite expressions and ways of talking about things, the kinds of things our friends say when they are imitating us.

Now consider that David lived a thousand years before Christ in the Late Bronze Age and composed psalms just after Israel became a unified kingdom for the first time. Ezekiel lived in captivity in Babylon over five hundred years before Christ hundreds of miles east of a destroyed Jerusalem. Paul wrote in the Greek and Latin-speaking cities of Greece and ancient Turkey in the first century after Christ. And Matthew was probably written in northern Syria even later still after Jerusalem had been destroyed again. We should not expect these individuals to use words in the same ways since they wrote in vastly different settings and wrote for vastly different audiences.

If we think these individuals all used words the same ways and had common meanings, we are not reading them in context. We are creating a unity of meaning by placing all their words into our theological context. This diversity is not a negative feature of the Bible, and it does not discount the significance of these books in any way. After all, why wouldn’t God have spoken in the categories of the people he was actually speaking to? It is a subtle narcissism to think that the meanings of the individual books of the Bible have to fit easily with one another from my perspective. I am not the original audience of any of these books—they were.

It is a subtle narcissism to think that the meanings of the individual books of the Bible have to fit easily with one another from my perspective.

An awareness of this diversity actually makes it easier to account for some “naughty data” in the text by taking individual contexts into account. For example, we face a hopeless contradiction between Mark and John if we think they both use their words in exactly the same way. Jesus says in Mark 8:12 that he will not give any signs (sēmeia) at all to his audience. But John 20:30-31 says that Jesus gave many signs (sēmeia), even more than recorded. Clearly Mark and John use the word sign differently.

James 2:24 says that individuals are considered right with God on the basis of their works (erga) and not by faith (pistis) alone. Ephesians 2:8-9 says that Christians are saved through faith (pistis) and not by works (erga). Either the words are being used with slightly different meanings or these two authors disagree with one another.

It is crucial to observe that the process of integrating these seemingly conflicting passages into a unified meaning is a process that takes place outside the biblical text itself. The individual books of the Bible themselves almost never tell us how to connect their teaching with the teachings of the other books. In other words, the final step of integration, the most important step in determining “what the Bible means” as a whole, is one that the Bible itself does not tell us how to take!

The final step of integrating the Bible’s diverse teaching, the most important step in deciding what the Bible means as a whole, is one that the Bible itself does not tell us how to take.

Placed within the context of the “New” Testament, the words of the Jewish Bible become the “Old” Testament and take on new meanings in their new context.

The main exception would be the way the way New Testament interprets the Old, for the books of the New Testament do frequently point to ways we can integrate their words with those of various parts of the Old Testament. For example, we saw in the last chapter that the literal meaning of the Old Testament was frequently tangential for the New Testament authors. In other words, the New Testament implies that one way to integrate its teaching with the Old Testament is to place the words of the Old Testament into the context of Christian revelation.

Here is a testimony to the flexibility of words. In context, the words of the Old Testament are the Jewish Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures. But placed within the context of the “New” Testament, they become the “Old” Testament, and the same words take on new meanings in their new context. You might be surprised at how differently a non-Christian Jew reads these words from how your typical Christian does.

But even within the New Testament we find diversity in how to appropriate the Old Testament, particularly its ethical teaching. Thus Matthew tells us that Jesus did not come to destroy the law (Matt. 5:17). True, Matthew’s Jesus transforms it by making love the ultimate principle for filtering it. The rules on murder and adultery become stricter—it becomes wrong even to contemplate such things (Matt. 5:21-30). Jesus prohibits divorce (Matt. 5:31-32), although the Old Testament allowed it freely (Deut. 24:1) and even commanded it at points (Ezra 10:3). On the other hand, Jesus reverses the Old Testament law of retribution, “an eye for an eye,” even though it is an Old Testament command (Matt. 5:38-42).[10] It becomes wrong to keep the law on this one.

But in contrast to Matthew, books like Mark, the letters of Paul, and the book of Hebrews all explicitly emphasize discontinuity with the Jewish law. If Matthew says that Jesus did not come to destroy the law, Ephesians says that Christ has abolished the law (Eph. 2:15). Paul says he is not “under law” (1 Cor. 9:20), and Mark says that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). The volume of scholarly books that attempt just to understand Paul’s view of the Jewish law alone testifies to how difficult it can be to find a coherent biblical teaching on issues like these.

This process of connection, prioritization, selection, and de-selection ultimately takes place outside the biblical text. In the end, there are so many possible ways to fit the Bible’s teaching together that it is no wonder we find so many differing positions on issues. The final step of deciding what “the Bible” means is a step that the Bible itself cannot take. We are the ones forced to integrate its varied teachings together.

Denominations and the Body of Christ

At some point we must wonder whether an insistence on the unity of the biblical text is the last vestige of a drive to read the Bible as a single text from God to us rather than as multiple texts inspired through human authors to ancient audiences. Is it the pretense that we form our understandings on the basis of the Bible alone that keeps us insisting on a unified meaning on some level? In other words, if the Bible alone is the source of truth, then we need to be able to find a “final answer” on each issue from the Bible.

Some find such unity by insisting that the same timeless principles run across the entire Scripture even if those truths play themselves out in individual books in time-bound ways. Thus perhaps each individual book is an example of God revealing a completely inspired and authoritative word without error to a specific context. But since these contexts differ from one another, we face the task of teasing the specific situational and cultural factors out from the more universal and timeless principles. Perhaps this is the correct strategy.

Or is it possible that God is so big and beyond our understanding that “he” can only be brought within our view by irreconcilable paradoxes?[11] Is it only in the middle of contradictory snapshots and kaleidoscopic flashes that we can even come close to capturing some sense of God’s greatness, power, and truth? Do we ultimately need Matthew and Paul not to fit neatly together to catch a glimpse of the ultimate reality?

Is it possible that God is so big and beyond our understanding that “he” can only be brought within our view by irreconcilable paradoxes and metaphors?

We wonder if the same is true to some extent with regard to the conflicting positions of the various denominations of Christendom. The Christian philosopher often feels obliged to resolve the question of whether God decides who will be saved (predestination) or whether we have the freedom to choose ourselves (free will). On a human plane, the two concepts contradict each other.

But who can speak for God? The Scriptures seem to affirm both as equally important truths. Who can say whether these two contradictory principles can exist paradoxically alongside one another in God? Perhaps this allowance for paradox is a potential strength of having church traditions that over-emphasize one teaching or another. Perhaps the human mind is not really capable of affirming paradoxical truths without blurring the concepts and watering down one truth or the other.

Maybe some of the diversity among different denominations is a help to the limitations of our human understanding.

Maybe some of the diversity among different denominations is a help to the limitations of our human understanding. Like the imagery of a body that the apostle Paul drew on (1 Cor. 12), perhaps some denominations are the hands, others the feet—some the security of the believer in Christ and others the need for continued faithfulness; some the grace of God and others the need for good works. As a whole we make up one body, but we are different and distinct.

We lose something when we force the meanings of individual books together, frequently creating a meaning that none of the books had.

Perhaps such an allowance for paradox might also let the books of the Bible hang in tension with each other at times, letting apparent conflict stand without always trying to resolve it. Perhaps we should let Matthew or James appear to disagree with Paul, if that is what they seem to do. We lose something when we force the meanings together, frequently creating a meaning that none of the books had.