Revelation cannot and must not be only scriptural
As the atheist fundementalists look in on the activities of religious people in the anglophone west they note with unering regularity the criticism that the scriptures of the major religions are fraught with problems of an ethical, scientific, philisophical and historical nature. Given their shallow analysis of religious discourse and meaning, they are, of course, absolutely correct. The great problem is that many, perhaps even most, of the people they are criticising share their analysis of religion. Phenomena such as the King James only movement may be charicatures of the modern obsession with scriptural revelation, but they do not deceive us when sugesting its prevelence.
The great Christian theologians have always been upset by the over reliance of their peers on one aspect of religious understanding, or neglect of another. In the dark ages, lack of reason was critiqed, in the middle ages and early modern period, lack of independent experience. In the 20th century the great Protestant theologians and many of their Catholic peers have criticised the reliance on texts without the necessary tools for understanding them, resulting in crude literalism. Different approaches have been taken to this problem, from the essentialist existentialism of Tillich, to the demythologisation of Bultman and Jaspers, to the move beyond textual innerancy to theological innerancy of Barth. However, for all these thinkers the problem remained the same: people had come to read the texts as something other than religious works, and faith had been replaced by credence.
Working in a purely textual format, and within the context of academic litterate culture it was difficult for these thinkers to sketch out a plan for correcting the degenerate literalism of many of the most active parts of western christianity. In fact, in order to see what a solution might entail we must look beyond their work towards instances of religion that have demonstrated the vitality of the diverse approaches that it is possible to take towards revelation. Many of these come from the left-christian tradition (like it or not, almost all of the great theologians of the 20th century have been socialists) and are most evident in Liberation theology and the more metaphysical aspects of German post-Marxist social theory, especially that of Erich Fromm (not a Christian himself, but deeply influential in this regard). Additionally we might look to the medieval mystics in order to learn something about what it means to experience faith rather than to hold beliefs. Meister Eckhart is a favourite of mine, but other mystics speak more potently to others. Hildegard of Bingen is very popular with many.
Of course, the most vital aspects of religious life, mysticism and religious organisation in life more broadly will always be seen as dangerous and subversive. In early modern England, the civil war was fraught with the tension between a power stuggle between elite elements and the genuine spiritual-social aspirations of many of the English people. The Levellers and Diggers were subsequently demonised and surpressed in much the same way that liberation theology, a far less spiritually radical movement (genuine religion is allways radical), has been demonised and surpressed by the Catholic Church. Again in England the Ranters showed how religion might radically motivate the whole of one's being in a way that incorporated not only scripture, but also Christ-like love and sacrifice and the genuine acceptence of the spirit.
Similarly, people who read the scriptures without the dry, cynical selectivism of the modern fundementalist, and instead use their own reason and God's inspiration come to very different conclusions. When saints have read the scriptures they have read them as living inspiration rather than dead dogma. We must not forget this, since we are all called to be saints.
In conclusion, the literalism of modern religion which renders it suseptible to atheist critiques is indeed its weakness. It is not possible to read the scriptural revelation without accepting the other revelations which are offered to genuinely religious people on a daily basis. We can understand scripture to be inspired. This is a philosophical position we can debate ad nauream. But we can also understand it to be inspiring. This is a religious position which informs the being of the reader.
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Originally Posted by Bovril
