I found this in Barbara C. Sproul’s introduction to Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World. It has been a long time since I have thought of myself as a religious person or had much to do with people who are religious in the orthodox way many of my teachers were when I was in yeshiva. The description below would not fit most of those men and women, whose commitment to their faith I continue to respect and even learn from; but there were others for whom Sproul’s words seem tailor-made; and these others, of course, have brothers and sisters in all faiths.
Holding literally to the claims of any particular myth…is a great error in that it mistakes myth’s values for science’s facts and results in the worst sort of religiosity. Such literalism requires a faith that splits rather than unifies our consciousness. Thinking particular myths to be valuable in themselves undermines the genuine power of all myth to reveal value in the world: it transforms myths into obstacles to meaning rather than conveyors of it. Frozen in time, myth’s doctrines come to describe a world removed from and irrelevant to our timely one; its followers, consequently, become strangers to modernity and its real progress. Those of such blind faith are forced to sacrifice intellect, emotion and the honesty of both to satisfy their creeds. And this kind of literalism is revealed as fundamentally idolatrous, the opposite of genuine faith.
I’m not quite sure how i feel about this quote, because it pretty much implies that a religious person is either a universalist or a fundamentalist, without any kind of middle ground between the two.
I think there’s a difference between believing that, say, the Garden of Eden story disproves evolution, despite tons of scientific evidence that says otherwise, and believing in a key point of your religion (the example that comes to mind for me is the resurrection).
KellyK @1
I don’t think you ever have to be either/or. It’s fine — in fact, necessary — to be inconsistent. The world and life are simply too complicated, and our human understanding of anything too limited for large-scale consistency to work. This is especially true in matters of religion, which attempt to grasp things that are way beyond human understanding.
What Sproul is describing is, IMHO, two common tendencies or directions in religion/mythology. One (which I would _not_ in general call “universalism”) is to use religion or myth to better understand and come to grips with things as they are and to see what could be. I would call this “forward,” and it is entirely consistent with the most orthodox of religious teachings. The other, fundamentalism, is to use myths to reject things as they are and instead retreat into an imaginary past where things were supposedly simpler and better.
BTW, I think that fundamentalism is not about “literal interpretation” at all. Using the word “literal” is simply a rhetorical trick to claim that their interpretation of texts is the one true intepretation.
KellyK:
Which resurrection is that?
Grace
Grace, sorry I wasn’t clear. Jesus’s resurrection.
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AMM, my reaction was largely to this bit:
The idea of viewing all myths as equally valuable and none of them literally true seems to me like the definition of universalism. Basically that it doesn’t matter, at all, what you believe, but believing in something is good. Though that might not be where Sproul was going, if I read the paragraph in context.
I do like your definitions of “forward” and “back”–the difference between using faith to see things as they are and using it to reject and ignore the reality you live in.
And I think you’re right that “literal” gets tossed around loosely, particularly in fundamentalist circles where “literal” really means “Person X’s mix of interpretation and wild-ass guess, which now must be accepted as literal truth as if it were straight from the mouth of God.”
KellyK:
For me, what rescues Sproul’s passage from simple relativism–which is the implicit charge I here behind your word “universalism”–is the phrase “it mistakes myth’s values for science’s facts and results in the worst sort of religiosity.” Someone who believes in the literal truth of the resurrection, for example, can still recognize that belief as an act of faith, meaning that it is beyond proof, beyond “science’s facts,” and therefore not make the mistake of the kind of literalism that Sproul is talking about, which, as I read her, is one in which people try to treat acts of faith as statements of (scientifically indisputable) fact.
Not how I saw it either.
Literalism is taking Genesis as true, and then looking for physical evidence that someone named Noah took a very huge boat to Mount Ararat, and that the rest of the world was completely submerged. To say that this happened 5500 years ago (500 years before the pyramids were built) and that it was not that long after the world first was created.
Because some people who interpret the Bible (young earth creationists) take the meaning of the Bible quite literally. They built a museum, where they tell kindergarten kids that dinosaurs lived alongside humans.
This is literalism to me.
Taking what should/could be allegories about good and evil, lessons of life in general, as specific examples with specific people. Garden of Eden doesn’t represent something about temptation…but about how evil/inferior women are? Wtf?
And bishops have “debated” with some early Christian theologians about resurrection (the one of Judgment Day), wether it was physical (with the same bodies you lived with), spiritual, or something else. They also hammered anyone down who contemplated some Bible writings as hinting to reincarnation. Origen of Alexandria being a famous one (called an heretic for believing in the pre-existence of souls – and he was a devout Christian theologian). Because it was politically disadvantageous for the Church to not be viewed as essential for the salvation of its people.
So twisting meanings into what they want it to mean, and THEN calling it the literal word of some god.
And people would wonder why I don’t trust organized religions generally. I won’t blame those who follow them, only those who oppress through it (who usually rely on fundamentalist dogma to try and pass laws, forbid stuff etc – for all people in countries where they reside). And well, YEC who brainwash little 5 years old with stories about Barney and Joe Neanderthal being (gentle, non-carnivorous) neighbors 6~10,000 years ago.
Richard Jeffrey Newman at 6: You’re right, “relativism” is probably a better word for what I mean than “universalism.” And I agree with your point that statements of faith are in a different category than scientific facts.
So, maybe the distinction is between taking things that are supposed to be allegory as literal and taking things that are meant to be articles of faith as literal?
To me, the screwed up thing about literalism doesn’t even start with believing that there could’ve been an actual Garden of Eden. It’s when you take that as a given, take the “seven days of creation” as literal 24-hour days, assume that the genealogies in Genesis are complete (as opposed to somebody’s best recollection of the most important ancestors), and keep making assumptions until you end up with Jesus riding a dinosaur and evolution not being real, and you’ll ignore mountains of scientific evidence to make those things be true. There’s this chain of assumptions that gets treated as verifiable reality when it’s not.
So in that respect, Sproul has a good point about idolatry–this path ends up with worshiping your own assumptions and interpretations and trying to shape reality to fit them. And when it doesn’t fit, reality is what gets discarded.
The point about power is a good one too. It boggles my mind that anyone who’s actually read the things Jesus said and did would be okay with defining women as inherently evil and of less worth than men. But, that’s been a major theme running all through Christianity.
And really, with the history of crusades and oppression, I can’t blame you for not trusting organized religion. I think religion most becomes what it’s supposed to be when it doesn’t have coercive power, and that people in power tend to twist religion to benefit themselves.