Content advisory: This episode briefly mentions suicide and drug use.

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Reading the Sacred Text is a continuation of Dr Robert Tilley’s popular The Bible is Catholic lecture series.

Transcript:

One of the things I often do in my classes on the Bible is to show a number of sacred texts from various religions. For example, I might bring along copies of the Rig Veda, the Dharmapadda, collections of Zen koans, and the Bible. I then ask what it is they all have in common. And, finally I say that it is not that they all say the same thing, but something more obvious. They have all been printed and then disseminated, indiscriminately so, in the market place. In other words, they have all become items able to be purchased by anyone who has the money to spare. My point is that none of these texts were written to be sold in the market place to any and all customers. They were written for those in the visible, authoritative hierarchical religious communion to which they belong.

As not a few commentators remind us, chief amongst which being Anthony Giddens, Modernity has a tendency to ‘dissembed’ things, by which is meant that things get taken out of their traditional context and, thereby, their meaning can change in rather profound ways. For example, sacred texts can become consumer items. The sacred becomes profane.

The context proper of the Bible is the covenantal communion of the people of God; Israel and the Church.

One of the main effects of the Reformation was to remove the Bible from the Church, to begin to secularise it. First of all this involved abstracting the Bible from the Catholic Church, but soon enough, in the seventeenth century especially, the Bible became even more secularised, became a buttress for the rise of the new bourgeois class and the rise of the new nation state. It was in this context that modern biblical criticism arose, especially so in seventeenth century England.

Because so much of modern biblical criticism was informed by the class politics and desires of the rising bourgeoisie, as might be expected a good deal of biblical scholarship was arbitrary and self-serving. In short, it was bad scholarship. Things would get even worse when, in the late eighteenth through the nineteenth into the early twentieth century Germany became the home to biblical criticism. It was then that biblical criticism became informed by all manner of racist ideas, especially anti-Semitism.

Now it is not my intention here to rehearse the history of modern biblical criticism, although it is very interesting and informative history and one wishes that more biblical scholars studied it, rather I want to highlight how it is we ought to read the Scriptures and more contemporary biblical scholarship has a lot to offer. You see, in the last forty to fifty years of biblical scholarship there has been something of a revolution. Many of the basic assumptions of earlier biblical criticism have been severely critiqued, and this has led us to a deeper appreciation of the sophisticated and subtle structure of the sacred text. To explain what it is I mean we might consider how we interpret apparent contradictions in the sacred text.

Let’s say we find contradictions between the first account of creation given in Genesis and the account that follows it in chapter two. Do we conclude that this means the accounts were originally written by different people at different times and that someone at a lot later time has tried to edit them together, making a bit of a mess of it in the process? Well, something like this was argued by most biblical scholars since the seventeenth century. Only, the last few decades have given rise to a different way of thinking. May it be the case that apparent contradictions are not evidence of sloppy editing but of sophisticated literary devices that I like to call ‘exegetical prompts’? Are they prompts to have us read deeper? To put it in terms we have used in this series, are they prompts to have us ascend the grades of the Quadriga, to venture deeper into the Scriptures as Temple?

We will return to this, but for the moment let’s come at our topic from a different angle.

It is often the case that in order to fully understand something it is good to compare it with something that appears to be similar to it, that perhaps arose in the same context as it did. For example, in the ANE we have a text called the Atrahasis Epic which tells of the creation of humanity and the subsequent flood which wiped out just about everyone. Of course we immediately think of the first 9 or so chapters of Genesis.

Atrahasis begins with a group of gods, the Igigi, moaning about how it is they have to do all the heavy work like digging canals. They sweat and break their backs while the other gods have it easy. To cut a long story short, the Igigi rise up in revolt and, after much threatening of violence by those higher up the divine scale, it is decided to make a creature who will have to do the back-breaking work in place of the Igigi, which is where we come in. Humanity is created to do the hard work. Only, we too revolt and this is where the flood comes in and we all drown (except for a fellow by the name of Utnapishtim, the Noah of the story).

If we compare this to the Genesis accounts some very significant differences strike us and it is these differences that tell us a good deal about the meaning of Genesis, a meaning we might have missed if we didn’t have Atrahasis close to hand. In Genesis humanity is not created to do back-breaking work by the sweat of our brow. Rather, we are created to commune with God in a happy paradise. With the fall, however, sweaty heavy labour begins, but it is a result of our actions, it is a result of our responsibility. The same with the flood, it is not a result of our revolting against unjust burdens placed on us by God, but of our injustice and violence. In Atrahasis there is little in the way of any real accent on our moral responsibility; we were created this way and thus we don’t have a choice in the matter. In Genesis, however, the accent is firmly on our responsibility. You could say that the whole of the Bible is a revelation of human responsibility and culpability and is designed to oppose ideas of fate. Ideas by which we might tacitly deny that we are morally culpable.

As I say, by reading the Scriptures in context, here the context of other ANE literature such as Atrahasis, we often get a deeper sense of the meaning of Scripture. Now let’s return to the issue of apparent contradictions.

Again let’s turn back to the beginning of the Bible, to Genesis.

It is not too difficult to see that between the so-called first account of creation given in Genesis 1 through to 2:3 and 2:4 to 25. For convenience’s sake I will simply refer to these as the first and second accounts.

The thing that is most obvious is that in the first account male and female are created together, at the same time, while in the second account only man, that is Adam, is created and woman, that is Eve, comes into existence at a later date. Indeed, in the second account the absence of woman is the major concern for there is no proper communion for Adam. Certainly none of the animals will serve in that capacity, but the implication is that nor will God. Adam is said to be alone even though he has God to keep him company! It is not enough for Adam to have God and all else in creation as companions, he must have someone who makes for a true and full communion proper to his being human. After all, in the first account we are told that the image of God comprises male and female. Hence, without the female complement there is no image of God proper.

Another major difference in the two accounts, perhaps the most significant contradiction, is that in the first account we are told seven times that creation is good (in Hebrew, tov). Indeed, on the last occasion, following the creation of humanity, we are told it is very good (tov meod). But when we turn to the second account we are told something a little bit different. In 2:18, and this let it be borne in mind is before the fall, we are told that it is “not good” (lo tov) for man to be alone. Hence the need for woman.

In the second account we are told that not everything is good, whereas in the first account everything was very good. Did the author or the editor of Genesis make a blunder? Did he fall asleep at the pen, as it were? This is pretty much what old style biblical critics used to argue, but we are not quite as arrogant or stupid to think that today. Rather, we can see that through a rather sophisticated narrative artistry the author is telling us something very profound indeed.

Just prior to 2:18 where we are told that it is not good for man to be alone, in 2:17 we are told that Adam is not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good (tov) and evil (ra’ah). As it happens we have been told in the first account what good looks like: It looks like all creation. Good/tov looks like being itself. But what does ra’ah/evil look like? The answer is in what follows: It is not good, lo tov, for man to be alone.

Evil is the absence of good, as the Fathers of the Church put it, evil is nothing in itself it is a fall away from being, a fall into non-being. But what does the fall away into non-being look like? The answer is given in this the so-called second account: Evil looks like the absence of proper communion. It looks like aloneness, it looks like loneliness and alienation. If you think about it the worse state of all is to be alone, to be lonely, to feel alienated from everyone, to have no special communion. We all know that no matter how bad an affliction, a disease, poverty, or anything else, if we have close family, friends, comrades, it can be suffered. But even if you are incredibly handsome, pretty, rich, healthy, famous, and if you feel lonely none of it matters. Hence, the amount of suicides and substance abuse among the rich and famous.

I really don’t think this needs arguing for, we all know this is true. And yet, it is passing strange that with the rise of the Reformation and the birth of the modern world it has come to be argued that the ideal self is that which is defined by the ideal of autonomous individuality. And this even includes the idea that we can stand alone before God and do not need to go to Church!

Back in Genesis God tells Adam that if he eats of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in that day he will die. As many wags have pointed out Adam does not die in that day but lives many hundreds of years after that. Again, did the writer or editor drop off and make a continuity error? No, what the author is doing is telling you that physical death is only an expression of death proper. Certainly it is the most obvious expression, but that there is a deeper death. And what is this more profound death?

One way of answering this is to think about what it is we experience at the death of a loved one? Are we crying for the one who is dead or for ourselves, for what it is we feel? That we cry for what it is we feel is natural for what we feel is death proper, namely the sundering of communion. The breaking of our relationship with the one who has died. Our communion has been fractured and has, we feel, now fallen into pieces, into fragments. Even our language of grief expresses this when we say we feel like we are coming apart. And in a sense we are, for with the death of the loved one something of us has likewise died. Death is the fracturing of communion and physical death is the most obvious expression of this.

Let’s see how this is expressed following the fall. What is it that occurs after Adam eats of the fruit? The first thing he and Eve know is that each are naked and they then cover up their bodies with leaves. Why? They have been commanded to be fruitful and multiply so it is not first and foremost shame, they are meant to have sex. But sex in its proper sense, as it is said in Genesis 2:24, is the close communion of marriage between male and female such that they become one flesh. But in the covering of their bodies Adam and Eve express a sense of distrust and vulnerability. The covering of their bodies expresses the desire to hide from each other, we might even say to begin to build armour for themselves. This too is expressed in the second thing they do, they hide from God. First their communion together is sullied with fear and distrust, and then their communion with God is likewise broken.

In short, the fracturing of communion expresses itself in fear, distrust, and a need to hide from those one is in communion with. If you read through the curses that follow on from the fall another common theme recurs, one we touched upon in the last episode, namely violence. There will be war between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s; a battle between the man and the soil; and tension and battle between the woman and the man. And of course, the first thing that happens on being booted out of Eden is murder, Cain kills Abel.

That the nature and supreme value of communion is the chief message of the Genesis accounts is also borne out by the literary structure of the first chapter of Genesis. In the first verses when God creates He does so in a mono-vocal and imperative fashion: “Let there be light!” and there was light, that sort of thing. Only, when we come to the creation of the image of God, humanity, the voice changes. It is now plurivocal and deliberative: “Let us create man in our image.” I do not want to get drawn into questions as to what this plural voice indicates, be it angels or an early intimation of the Trinity, the point is that the text as it stands says that the creation of humanity as the image of God requires an act of creation unlike that which preceded it. It requires a communal creation in which what creates speaks, as it were, in communion (let us) and what is created is communion (male and female).
When the accounts given in Genesis use apparent contradictions to tell us that “it is not good for man to be alone” thereby telling us what evil as not-goodness looks like, and how they tell us that the fracturing of communion and the absence of communion is death, then, although Genesis may seem to be a simply written text, it is in reality anything but. It contains the most profound teachings imaginable concerning the human condition, the nature of good and evil, and what it is to image God.

When, with the Reformation and the birth of Modernity, people began to think in terms of the ideal of the autonomous individual we can see why so many artists, writers, and philosophers have argued that the rise of Modernity is the rise of the disenchantment of the world because it is alienation coming into its own. Likewise, when we see in many currents of Protestantism the rejection of the communion of the saints, the rejection of the role of Mary as the Mother of the Church, the rejection of the role of prayers for the dead, or in certain liberal and heretical Protestant churches the rejection of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity we can see expressed in these things the ever deeper fall into the fragmentation of communion and the rise of loneliness. That we increasingly hear even Catholics say that in order for them to be a Christian they do not have to go to Church then, whatever else this means, it means that the logic of death has become very powerful indeed.

Finally, what we see writ large in these matters is the result of having fallen under the sway of the false ideology of the ideal of the individual standing alone not needing communion. That is the individual thinking he or she can stand alone before God. But this idea soon works itself out further still. So it is that it does not take long for the feeling to come that one is, in fact, standing all alone, that there is no God before whom one is standing. One is simply just standing alone. But it doesn’t even stop there, for in Modernity the idea soon took root that there is nothing real that can stand alone, that the very idea of a self as a real thing is a delusion! God and the self dissolve into the air! The world becomes like an absurdity thought up by Lewis Carroll. Only in our Alice in Wonderland world instead of the Cheshire Cat’s grin suspended alone in the air we are left with nothing at all standing alone before no one at all.

But against this stands that which is built upon a rock, the covenantal communion that is the Church.

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Reading the Sacred Text is a continuation of Dr Robert Tilley’s popular The Bible is Catholic lecture series.

Transcript:

I am of the opinion that one of the chief expressions of atheism (perhaps it is even the cause of atheism) is a loss of belief in humanity. If you think about it we are pretty amazing creatures, the things we build and the things we do, no other animal comes even close. In fact, our greatness shows up in the very way we can abuse our ability such that we could destroy the earth. I would not be surprised if one day we develop a weapon that could destroy the whole universe! In other words our greatness is seen not only in the good we can do but the evil we can do as well. What is the most glorious can become the most foul. After all, the Devil was said to have been one of the most glorious angels before he fell. But we seem to want to escape this risk by trivializing ourselves, by pretending that humanity is nothing special. It seems as if as our culture loses belief in God it no longer believes in humanity. We think ourselves just one more animal among others, we cease to see that even if we are monsters we are magnificent monsters.

The question for us is why should there be this relationship between faith in God and faith in humanity? The answer can be found at the beginning of the Bible.

One of the best known laws in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is the prohibition against making an image of God. But the odd thing is that at the very beginning of Torah, in Genesis chapter one, God Himself makes an image of Himself – namely us, humanity. The paradox is all the more brought out when we see how it is we are introduced in Genesis. Before we get to that, however, we need to remind ourselves of some of the things that we touched upon in the two previous episodes of this series.

Let’s begin by calling to mind how the Church read the sacred scriptures. The Scriptures are structured like a Temple. As in the Temple there is a series of grades to Scripture ordered in a hierarchical fashion. As one journeys in one ascends and draws closer to the heart of the meaning of Scripture, to its Holy of Holies. Like the High Priest in the Temple we enter into the sacred text and seek to journey through into the heart of Scripture, into the place in which the presence of the glory of God resides. This understanding of the text-as-Temple was expressed in what came to be called the Quadriga, the notion that the sacred text was made up of four levels of meaning, all of which are continuous one with the other, but all of which lead up to the highest meaning, the spiritual meaning as it were. I ought to say that the medieval rabbis had a like doctrine which they referred to under the term Pardesh, which means ‘orchard’. In the use of Pardesh there are likewise four levels of meaning, all of which are graded and continuous one with the other.

We have to understand that the Fathers and the rabbis did not impose this structure on the sacred text for we can see it intimated in the Scriptures themselves. In following episodes we will see examples of this. Here, however, I want to argue that the first chapter of Genesis provides something of the Temple-paradigm for the reading of the rest of the Torah (and one could argue for the rest of Scripture as well). By this I mean that the first chapter of Genesis serves as an introduction of sorts to discerning the way in which both the Scriptures are to be read and understood. As I say, we are to read as if we are making our way, like the High Priest made his way through the temple into the Holy of Holies, and thereby into the presence of God. But putting it like this probably makes it no clearer, so let’s look at the beginning of Genesis and see how this works out in practice. And, in doing so we will come back to our topic proper, the greatness of humanity.

When we read through the first chapter of Genesis we might notice that we progress through a series of divisions or separations, from light and darkness, the separation of the waters above from those below, the separation of water from dry land, day from night, and even those statements concerning vegetation and animals reproducing after their own kind denotes a separation between species, one that scholars argue echoes the later priestly divisions between animals clean and unclean. The overall feeling is that as creation progresses it as if we are proceeding through series of veils that are drawn back in order for higher and higher things to appear, until we the reader enter into the height of creation, into the Holy of Holies, and there we see the image of God.

Here I ought to point out that scholars have long understood that the account given later in the Torah of the building of the Tabernacle (an earlier form of the Temple, one that could be moved around) mirrors the Genesis account of creation. Other scholars have taken this further and have argued that the creation account mirrors that of the building of a temple. In fact, this is not so surprising for the simple reason that in the ANE (if not in many other cultures as well) the idea was that the cosmos, or universe, was structured along the lines of a temple. Indeed, that the temple on earth mirrored the cosmos. The temple was seen to be a microcosm of the macrocosm. That is, the temple on earth was a kind of mini-version of the whole cosmos! It seems right and proper, then, that the Bible should record the act of creation in the manner of the building of, as well as a journey through, a temple. It is also appropriate, then, that the building of the tabernacle (the early temple) should, in turn, mirror the building of creation.

So it is that as we read our way through the account in Genesis of creation we proceed like the High Priest going ever deeper into the temple until we see the image of the God. Now here’s the point I want to make. If we lived way back then, and, if we entered into a temple, we would expect to see in the heart of the temple an image of the god of the temple. But in the Torah as we noted earlier God forbade His people from making an image of Him. Only as we also noted, God Himself, here in Genesis, makes an image of Himself, which is to say us, humanity. So at least once a year there was an image of God in the Jerusalem temple, namely the High Priest who, of course, was a human and thus an image of God.

This is the amazing thing that Genesis tells us: we humans are the image of God in creation. We are the pinnacle of creation; we are the summit of creation. We are, as theologians have put it, the priest of creation being the covenantal representative of creation. We are the representative of creation before God. We mediate between God and the rest of creation. That is why we are incredible and amazing creatures! Only, when we fell, that is when Adam fell, then all else fell. It is that which tells us of our great responsibility!

Because we are fallen the way in which we understand and read creation, the way in which we read ourselves, and the way in which we understand God and read His word has become distorted. What does this distortion look like? Again, the best way in which to answer this is to look at the Scriptures themselves, and to do this we will stick with the Torah.

There are a number of overarching themes that serve to unite the disparate contents and documents that make up the first five books of the Bible. The most obvious is the theme of journey. The Torah unfolds as the journey from the old Eden to the hoped for New Eden, the promised-land. Only, of course, the Israelites do not get there and the Torah ends with Moses dying on a mountain that overlooks the New Eden. At the end of the Torah we are poised on the threshold. I want to return to this theme in a later episode for it is one that could be said to inform the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, it also informs the Church’s teaching to the effect that she is a pilgrim Church.

Another theme, one that is not so often commented upon, is that which has to do with our being the image of God, and in order to understand what follows we need to reflect on what an image is. This is going to sound really obvious but here goes anyway. An image is what it is by reason that it points to and even reveals something other to it, something that it is not. We can say, then, that an image has its identity proper by reason that it defers to that which is other to it. As soon as an image pretends to be what it is meant to be an image of then it falls away from its identity proper, it thereby becomes corrupt. To put it in biblical terms, if we think we are God then we no longer are what we really are, namely an image of God. We become something false, something fake, in other words something not quite real. We fall away from our proper identity. You could say, if you wanted to be more philosophical, that we fall away from our very being. We fall into sin thereby corrupting not only ourselves but all else in creation. Simply put, we forget who we really are. We are no longer content with being the priest of creation we want to be the God of creation.

This forgetting of who we really are is expressed in the way we read and understand ourselves, the way we read and understand the rest of creation, and, of course, the way we read and understand God, especially His word. As we no longer understand ourselves as being an image of God we consequently fall into a kind of idolatry. But what does this fall look like? How does it express itself?

The Bible notes that the first thing that happens on our being expelled from Eden is murder – Cain kills Abel and it’s been violence ever since. We have turned ourselves into bloodthirsty monsters who, given half a chance, will do anything to get what it is we want even if we want our own death as well as the death of others. Of course we try to conceal our less noble desires, but the word of God works to reveal our hidden intentions. We try to present our intentions as noble and pure, pious and reasonable, but really these serve to mask a deep seated hatred not only at God but at His image, that is a hatred of ourselves that expresses itself as violence. Among other things it is this that the word of God reveals.

For example, the Torah spares no punches in revealing the character of Israel: they whinge and they revolt against Moses, indeed they revolt against God and seek to go back to the gods of Egypt, they apostasise and they lie. In other words the Israelites are like the rest of humanity, and that even though God lives amongst them! We might say of the Torah that it progressively reveals the fallen state of humanity largely through those closes to God namely the people of Israel.

The picture the Bible paints of humanity in its duplicity and its increasing violence and injustice goes hand in glove with another related theme: that of the revelation of God. After all, if humanity is the image of God then we might expect the revelation of God to become less clear than it might otherwise have been. Thus, when we read through the Torah we might note a rather strange phenomenon: God becomes increasingly strange even violent, and finally so terrifying that there is a general sense of relief when He is hidden away in the heart of the early Temple, which is to say the tabernacle.

To be brief, think of how at the beginning, in the garden, God is depicted as walking around just like a human being does. Even soon after the fall this still seems to be the case when Cain, having just killed his brother, runs into God. But things begin to change, such that when Abraham has a vision of God, God appears as a burning torch and pot and we read that Abraham was terrified. Later, with Moses, God appears as a burning bush, later still He is present as a pillar of fire and smoke, and later still on Mt Sinai He comes down in fire accompanied by thunder and lightning, an earthquake and unearthly trumpet blasts! The Israelites are absolutely terrified! Finally, to the relief I imagine of the Israelites, He is hidden away in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle.

There appears to be a correlation of some kind between the way the image of God becomes corrupted and the way God appears to us. It is almost as if He answers to us in the way we are. As if He begins to image us in order to have us confront what it is we have become. But of course God does so in order to have us repent and to seek life and not death. He does so in order to speak a word to us that will get through our corruption and self-hatred. To have us remember that we are an image of God we need to be pierced by the word of God. The word of God must reveal to us our sinfulness, our duplicities, and our lies. Something we touched upon in an earlier episode concerning the role of the word of God in Hebrews chapter 4.

We might put it differently: in Ephesians 5:26 St Paul writes that the word of God washes the bride of Christ the Church in order to make her ready for her wedding day. In other words, in revealing our corruptions and lies the word of God washes us in order to prepare as to enter into the presence of God. This, of course, corresponds to the kind of sacred ablutions or washings that a priest had to undergo if he was to journey deeper into the Temple. Now in the Quadriga, the four levels of meaning to the Scriptures, the second level was the tropological or moral level. This means that if we are to journey deeper into the meaning of the Scriptures then we must understand that it is not merely a matter of scholarly reading but also of a moral reading and cleansing of ourselves.

Think of it this way: If we approach the Scriptures with the hidden intention of getting at others, or of justifying our injustices, or of greed, or of convincing ourselves that our sins are really holy practices, or of helping us to feel ourselves superior to our neighbour, then we simply will not be able to read through to the deeper meanings of the Bible. We will not be able to ascend to the Holy of Holies.

Ultimately we will not read the Scriptures as a means of grace that can restore the image of the true God who is just, merciful and loving, but instead we will read them as a means of violence against ourselves and others, as a means to an image of a false god, one who is unjust, unmerciful, and bloodthirsty.

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Reading the Sacred Text is a continuation of Dr Robert Tilley’s popular The Bible is Catholic lecture series.

Transcript:

It’s not uncommon for those who think themselves so very clever to say that Fundamentalists want to take us back to the medieval age. Fundamentalism, they say, is of the dark ages and was put to flight by the rise of enlightened Modernity, but like Godzilla aggrieved at Tokyo it has returned in force to wreak vengeance. So goes the script, one that we have all heard in some form or other a million or so times before.

It’s also not uncommon for people who think themselves to be so very clever to show themselves to be fools. Uneducated fools who confuse the clichés they have picked up from the popular media with real historical knowledge. Having imbibed the history of the world according to Hollywood they then proceed to pronounce upon everything and anything. And it is a given of this history that anything prior to the beginning of the rise of Modernity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was full of witch-burning fundamentalists who thought the world was flat and so that they would not inadvertently wander off over the edge of the world, they spent their time at home counting how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

As scholars have become weary in saying, Fundamentalism is, in fact, a Modern phenomenon, one that in the West at least, begins in the 16th century, develops in the seventeenth under the influence of scientific rationalism, and comes into its own in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. The dates are significant for ‘Fundamentalism’ arises and develops within currents associated with Protestantism. It is a slow development but the seed of it is there present in Luther and later Calvin. Indeed, it then informs the rise of more secular interpretation of the Bible.

Those who pride themselves on their modern enlightened liberalism like to think of Fundamentalists as akin to hillbillies, but they have been anything but; often they have been at the forefront of the use and development of communication technology from the printing press through to radio and television, to the use of contemporary social media including twitter. The reason for this is that a good deal of modern communication technology favours the kind of straightforward clarity that bullet points and tweets give. All meaning becomes reducible to a few characters and there is little patience for anything more subtle or sophisticated. As we will see, Fundamentalism is ideally suited to modern communication technology for it too wants meaning to be quickly if not immediately conveyed.

But what is Fundamentalism? It is not my purpose to rehearse the scholarly debates over what constitutes Fundamentalism proper, except to note that what is generally held to be a characteristic of it is an understanding of the Sacred Text in which there is really only one meaning to the text in question. And that this meaning is what is often referred to as being the ‘literal’ meaning. Fundamentalism levels the text such that there is really only one meaning and all other meanings are a result of sinful delusion and corruption.

Of course the Bible is not written in bullet point form or, as far as I know, God did not tweet the prophets – and this I think is one of the many proofs for the inspiration of Scripture. The Bible is full of poetry and prose and often employs a style that would have been confusing to the original audience – the Prophets being a case in point. Fundamentalism tries its best to correct God, for it does all in its power to iron out the problems in Scripture so that it can reduce the meaning of the Bible to the size of an easily digestible pamphlet.

The Bible is full of light and darkness, of sometimes clarity ringed about with mysterious obscurity, with contents that can be both full of hope and then, all of sudden, threatening terror. More importantly as we will see, there are levels of meaning, not just one meaning, which levels are in continuity one with one another, levels that often lead to a place of enigmatic ambiguity; a place that is attended by a silence that can profoundly unnerve us. As this series proceeds I hope to give a number of examples of this, but for the time being I want simply to establish the principle upon which we will proceed.

The difference between Modern rationalist and Fundamentalist reading on one side, and the pre-Modern, let us say Medieval, reading on the other, can be illustrated in this way: although a Modern rationalist biblical scholar will disagree with a Fundamentalist scholar concerning the meaning of a biblical passage they both share the same basic assumptions and method. They both understand each other even if they disagree with each other. But let’s say both of them read one of the Medieval Church commentators on the Bible, then our Modern rationalist and Fundamentalist might learn to agree with one another for both will feel that the Medieval commentator is if not insane then, at the least, has been seriously misled by the traditions of the Church.

You see, what they will find in the Medieval commentator is perhaps some sensible insights into the literal meaning of the biblical text being discussed, but very quickly that commentator moves on to interpret the Bible in a manner that is not acceptable to either our Modern rationalist or Fundamentalist. The medieval commentator holds that there are multiple meanings to a biblical text and that these are all hierarchically graded such that all manner of mystical meanings are found in the text. For the rationalist and Fundamentalist this will not do, there is only one real meaning, the literal, and this meaning is able to be reduced to simple propositional clarity – the bullet point. Those higher meanings, those mystical meanings are simply the projections of the kinds of nonsense that the priests taught. We, however, are Modern and that means we know there is only one meaning proper, the literal meaning, and that this is able to be reduced to the measure of a tweet.

The term ‘reduced’ is important here for though Modernity takes many forms the logic that tends to inform these different forms is one of a secularising levelling. Modernity prides itself on the idea of equality, which is a good thing, but it translates this into levelling out, especially in matters religious, hence like Fundamentalism it dislikes the idea of hierarchical authority in matters religious. It dislikes the idea of grades, and that includes the idea of grades of sacred meaning in the Bible. Hence, in Modernity not only are the Scriptures levelled out so too the cosmos, the meaning of everything is flattened out and because of this everything becomes manipulable. We can see this in Fundamentalism which especially in Christianity is marked by a suspicion of things mystical.

Think of it this way, there is one thing that both the Reformation and later secular rationalism set themselves to oppose: the Catholic Church and with it the notion of priests and religious hierarchy. We might say that informing Modernity is a logic that is both levelling and reductive, one that not only disenchants the cosmos, making of it mere stuff, but that strips the sense of sacredness from the Bible itself, making of it just another book to be subjected to a non-transcendent secular way of study.

Of course, the Church’s view has been rather different, not only are there hierarchical grades in the Church, but also to the Scriptures, and to the cosmos itself. Indeed, hierarchical grading is, we might argue, absolutely necessary to sacredness, remove the grades and what you get is level plain of flat sameness.
Now, there is one term that serves to sum up the pre-Modern, yes Medieval view of Scripture, and this is the term the Quadriga.

The idea informing the Quadriga is that the Scriptures are composed of four levels of meaning: the literal or historical; the tropological or moral; the anagogical or eschatological; and the allegorical or spiritual. In actual fact, the number of levels could differ from commentator to commentator for some held that there were only two or three levels, others that there were seven, others nine or even eleven, and there were other variations as well. The sense is the same in all these schemes hence the term ‘Quadriga’ serves as a shorthand for the phenomenon of hierarchically ordered grades of meaning to Scripture.

What the Quadriga testifies to is that the Scriptures are constituted in hierarchically graded way such that they mirror the structure of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was of course the holy place for Israelites and like all temples it was structured in such a way that a priest by journeying in, ascending as it were up the grades, would, if he was the High Priest, finally enter into the uppermost grade, the Holy of Holies, and there enter into the presence of the Glory of God.

Just as the grades in the Temple are in continuity one with the other, after all a priest could only get to the Holy of Holies by first of all entering in through the entrance door, so are the grades of meaning in Scripture, we enter in through the literal meaning. Now, it bears repeating that the higher (or deeper) grades do not contradict the literal meaning, rather is the literal meaning elevated, lifted up, expanded out. As one reads deeper still the literal meaning is transformed, is perfected, and it is so by reason that one draws closer and closer to the presence of the Glory of God. The words begin to crack open, the meaning begins to unfurl, there is a growth just as a seed grows in good soil, and just as the seed can give rise to an abundant harvest, so too does the seed that is the word of God give rise to an abundant harvest of meaning.

Here we ought also to note that the Medieval commentators not only held that the Church and the Scriptures were hierarchically graded, but so too all creation, that is the cosmos, and, in fact, so too the reader of the Scriptures and creation, which is to say ourselves. That is, we, ourselves, are likewise graded, from the literal which is to say the biological, through the soul or psychological, to the spiritual. Thus, for the medieval commentator there was a very real correspondence between the text of Scripture, the text of creation, and the reader of both, namely us. After all, we are that part of the universe that can read itself! Among other things this meant that when all was in accord then there would be an abundant fruitfulness of meaning.

We will explore this more in subsequent episodes, but we need to keep the theme of the Quadriga in mind, to remember that the Scriptures are to be read by reference to hierarchically graded meanings and that they are to be read as if we were replicating the journey of the High Priest through the Temple in Jerusalem in order to ascend to the vision of God.

But it would not do to end here. In the Bible the vision of God is always tied to the presence of God. Where God is revealed there is he present, and God is fully revealed in Jesus Christ, especially him crucified. The Cross is the key to Scripture and that especially so by reason that it is by the Cross that we can ascend up through the grades of Scripture and enter into the presence of the Glory of God.

The goal of our reading is to enter deeper and deeper into the presence of God in Christ and we do so by not only entering into his presence but by truly and really participating in this presence; by truly and really eating of the word of God to which the words of God that are Scripture point. That is, by truly and really eating of the body and blood of our Lord we truly and really become one with the meaning proper of the Scriptures. The Eucharist is the meaning proper of the Bible for it provides the substance proper of the Bible.
And as the Church is the body of Christ, a point St Paul makes a number of times, then it is only in the Church that the full meaning of Scripture can be found. It is in the Church that the integrity of the hierarchical grades of meaning are preserved. It is the Church that defies both the rationalist and the fundamentalist levelling of the Scriptures. It is the Church that is the good soil in which the word of God bursts forth in an explosion of meaning.

Whatever else you might think of all of this, you might think it Medieval nonsense, romantic folly, priestly delusion, or even unenlightened idiocy, but there’s one thing I think you would have to agree that it is not: it is not Fundamentalism.

The post Beyond Fundamentalism appeared first on Cradio.

We’re very happy to present this new show from Dr Robert Tilley on how the Bible is Catholic, and how we read it as Catholics.

In this first episode, Dr Robert Tilley tells a story that will make the blood boil, and what this says about the great responsibility we have been given by God.

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Please note: This episode makes reference to cases of sexual assault.

Reading the Sacred Text is a continuation of Dr Robert Tilley’s popular The Bible is Catholic lecture series.

Transcript:

In Romans 3:1-2, St Paul asks what advantage did the Jews have over the Gentiles, and he answers by saying that they had been given the very oracles of God. That is, that Israel was blessed not least because they had been given the words of the Lord, the word of God. But we might ask what this advantage looked like, practically speaking? And the short answer is that it meant Israel was especially well placed to be able to identify the workings of injustice. The longer answer is what follows and be warned it stirs the blood somewhat.

A few years ago now the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story that positively made the blood boil. As the report itself pointed out it wasn’t a new story for what it detailed had been going on for some decades now. Nevertheless, for all its importance after a couple of days the story had all but disappeared! I guess like others I hoped that this was because the police had taken over and were investigating the serious allegations. Only, one had the sneaking suspicion, prompted by past experience, that this was probably not the case. One suspected that the decision had been made to let those involved sort it all out even though the matters concerned were criminal in nature. It appeared as if the story had been voluntarily suppressed – but for what reason? I suspect that old nemesis political correctness – but you be the judge. Be warned though, it’s a story that will make your blood boil! Only, do not let your rage prevent you from listening all the way through for I would like to think that on having heard all that there is to say that your faith as a Catholic will have been deepened.

The newspaper report had to do with a Muslim college in Auburn, apparently the young men there are renowned for sexually harassing women, so much so, a number of women have even alleged rape. It is beyond dispute that women are regularly abused at this college: that they are sworn at; made to submit to degrading behaviour; and pressured into things they would rather not do. One incident the newspaper reported was of forty of these young men, all naked, surrounding one girl, all the while subjecting her to a torrent of vile abuse. At sporting events they will surround female competitors and shower them with insults in order to put them off their game.

These young Muslim men play on fear, on their greater physical strength and, it seems, on the certain knowledge that the religious authorities, the Imams, the college authorities, and, for that matter, the police as well, will do nothing.

If that doesn’t make you angry then what about this: most astonishing of all is that this behaviour has been going on for at least two decades. Indeed, those who have attended the college, who found the behaviour disgusting, say it has been going on for much longer than that. So it’s not just once but many times over many years that the relevant authorities have done nothing. What do they think, that this is trivial behaviour, something merely ‘naughty’, to be winked at, boys being boys, just young men letting off steam?

Let’s get this clear: rapes have been alleged, harassment has been regularly reported, abuse is a by-word, and the only thing that happens is that now and then one of these ‘naughty’ boys might be told to leave by term’s end. Nothing, nothing is being done – the college authorities, the police, the Imams for whatever reason do nothing to put a stop to it. This is unjust! Morally and criminally unjust!

What, is it because Muslims are above the law? Oh yes, we all know that if this were any other college then you could be sure that the politically correct media would be all over it: the police would be thoroughly investigating the allegations, we wouldn’t hear the end of it in the secular liberal media. The North Shore and the Eastern suburbs opinion makers sipping at their lattes would be outraged. There would be calls for Royal Commissions! But not when it’s Muslim college out at Auburn.

Justice demands that we do not look away. Justice demands that we put a stop to this. Justice demands that these Muslims…., hold on, sorry I’ve made a mistake…how embarrassing…this is awful…I must really apologise to Muslims and to any Muslim college. You see, all the things I said were happening in the college were reported in the SMH only the report was not about a Muslim college in Auburn but about St Paul’s, the Anglican College at Sydney University.

Let’s take a breather. How are we feeling now? Any different? The same standards still apply, right? I mean our blood is still boiling isn’t it?

Funny isn’t it, now that Muslims aren’t in the picture or images of young men who are let us say of a more swarthy complexion, one can feel the blood cooling down. After all, these Sydney University college boys are good lads beneath it all! Furthermore, it is behaviour that has not been confined to St Paul’s College. Some of you might remember how, back in the 1990s, similar things were reported happening at St Andrews, the Presbyterian College at Sydney University. Let’s reflect on this fact a little: that was back in the 1990s, many of those young men would now be among our top-flight lawyers and barristers and business leaders, even politicians. Or perhaps don’t reflect upon it because it’s a rather scary thought! Let’s leave it as blind spot, one that serves to hide what it is we all really know is there but do not want to address.

A good example is the Chaser team, those wacky boys who have become rather well-paid celebrities. Known for their courageous satire, their merciless expose of our societies hypocrisies – and yet most of them were Sydney University boys from the 1990s, indeed a number were college boys, and they were there when all these things were going on! Strange isn’t it, but I cannot recall them ever addressing the carrying-on in the colleges by the offspring of the rich and powerful.

Anyway, you probably don’t remember those incidents even though they were written up in the press. Perhaps you are too young, but I do not think you are too young that you can’t recall the story that opened this column for that was reported only four or five years ago. And then there were the more recent incidences and allegations concerning St. Johns the Catholic college at Sydney University. As I say perhaps you don’t remember these events. But I’m pretty sure you do remember those incidents reported in the papers of young Muslim males raping and harassing young women. Thing is, those men do tend to end up in prison for anywhere up to ten to fifty years.

Thing is, God is no respecter of persons and God hates injustice. Indeed, according to the Bible God positively loathes injustice and that especially in those are of the people of God; in other words those who own the oracles of God. If there is one thing more than injustice that God can’t stomach it is hypocrisy, for hypocrisy protects injustice by reason that it both justifies and conceals injustice.

When Jesus condemned the Pharisees he was not condemning Judaism but the corruption of Judaism. And on more than one occasion Jesus gave his sternest warnings to the apostles and other disciples, not least concerning not abusing the little ones placed under their charge – which ought to give those clerics who perpetrated and covered up sex-abuse pause for thought (Matthew 18:6; Mark 9:47). The principle is summed up in Jesus’ comment to the effect that “to whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). As Catholics, which is to say as members of the Church that is the Body of Christ, much indeed has been given to us and thus much indeed is expected of us. We not only have the word of God that is Scripture but the word of God that is the Apostolic Tradition handed down to us by the successors of the Apostles. We have truly been given entrusted with the oracles of God!

The fundamental principle of grace is that it is given to us so that we can be a means of grace to others. Grace is not given, first and foremost, to us for our benefit; it benefits us when we use it to benefit others.

Jesus said to the hypocrites, to those to whom much had been given, that they had made the “word of God of no effect” (Mark 7:13), meaning by this that they had effectively nullified the power of the word of God. And this raises the question as to what the effect of the word of God ought to be. Thankfully the Bible tells us for in Hebrews 4:12 we read that the “word of God is a sharp two-edged sword that pierces through to the join of bone and marrow, soul and spirit,” that it thereby reveals our innermost hidden intentions and machinations, those things that we want to remain hidden. In short, the word of God principally works not so much as to reveal God but us.

In revealing who we truly are and the kinds of machinations and duplicities we practise against others and against ourselves the word of God clears a place for the revealing of God. In other words, the word reveals to us that we are not God, far from it; we are closer to being a devil. If there is no true and often painful revelation of who we are and what it is we are capable of doing we run the risk of making the word of God of no effect and we do this by turning it into a weapon to damn others thereby justifying our hatred of them.

Jesus is the Word of God to whom the words of God in the Bible ultimately point us. It is pertinent, then, that a good deal of Jesus’ mission was to make the blind see – to have us see what it is we would rather keep hidden behind the blind spot, and that especially from ourselves.

The Bible is Catholic, to the Church is given the oracles of God, and it is so for many reasons that will, I hope, become clear in the course of this series of talks. The thing is that after St Paul said that Israel was advantaged in that she was entrusted with the oracles of God, he then went on to explain what this meant. In Romans 3:9-20 it means that Israel is best placed to know that they and everyone else are sinners and that all are in need of the grace and mercy of God.

For every Catholic the Bible is Catholic but for each of us as individuals it ought to be Catholic if only because it prompts us to a searching out of ourselves and gives to us a consequent desire for repentance and reconciliation.

Finally, when the Bible does reveal God it reveals that He loves justice and hates injustice. And when God became incarnate He became fully revealed. So it was that when Jesus Christ scourged the Temple of profiteers and hypocrites it was revealed that God has blood that boils.

The post A Story to Make Your Blood Boil appeared first on Cradio.