Before proceeding to an examination of subsidiary problems with American evangelical biblicism, it makes sense to step aside and briefly look at some historical, sociological, and psychological aspects of the matter.
Philosophical Assumptions Underwriting American Biblicism
The historical roots of American evangelical biblicism’s failure to grapple with the multivocality and polysemy of scriptural texts are many and would require an entire book to explicate. Most crucial among them, however, are certain teachings of Charles Hodge (1797–1878) and Benjamin Warfield (1851–1921), at their times both highly influential professors at Princeton Theological Seminary. Hodge’s and Warfield’s teachings were set within and governed by the then-reigning philosophy of Scottish commonsense realism and the Baconian inductive-empirical philosophy of science.[114]
To keep things brief, suffice it to say that the former philosophy emphasized the God-given capacity of human perceptions and mind to directly grasp the essential nature of objects perceived; the latter construed science as the task of gathering natural specimens as facts and inductively arranging them in proper order for the purpose of better understanding the rational intelligibility of the world in the form of general laws. Both were intent to resist any kind of Kantian idealism—and the theological liberalism to which it often gave rise—that would split the knower from the known and invest the knower with autonomous epistemic authority to define the known through his or her own perception and “speculative” theorizing. Implicit in Scottish commonsense realism is a “picture theory” of language, which says that “words are directly knowable by the mind and, in addition, are direct representations of the objects to which they refer. Logically, therefore, words and sense impressions are identical in that each refers directly to objects. Those objects, in turn, are directly and with utmost certainty known by the mind.”[115] The most important Scottish commonsense realist, Thomas Reid (1710–96), put it this way: “Language is the express image and picture of human thoughts; and from the picture we may draw some certain conclusions concerning the original [object to which language refers].”[116]
Relying upon this taken-for-granted philosophical backdrop, Hodge defined theology as a science whose method is to “begin with collecting well-established facts, and from them [to] infer the general laws which determine their occurrence.” The source of all such theological facts is, of course, the Bible, which contains “all the facts which God has revealed concerning Himself and our relation to him. . . . The Bible contains all the facts or truths which form the content of theology, just as the facts of nature are the contents of the natural sciences.”[117]
Furthermore, Hodge wrote, “The Bible is a plain book . . . intelligible by the people,” who are “everywhere assumed to be competent to understand what is written.”[118] Given this outlook, the task of theology consists of collecting the relevant facts from the Bible and inductively piecing them together according to the inherent logic of their own “internal relations” into the more general whole representing systematic Christian doctrine. Happily, this assumed philosophical background guaranteed that the biblical facts—represented in passages of scripture—would be self-evident and clear, even univocal, in their meaning, their relation to other biblical facts, and their relation to the world. The key to achieving this was to get human subjectivity, interpretation, and “speculation” out of the way and so to let the facts simply speak for themselves.
Oddly, it did not seem to trouble Hodge that Scottish commonsense realism entailed a highly optimistic view of human knowledge that was inconsistent with his own Augustinian-Calvinist heritage, which emphasizes the epistemologically and noetically devastating effects of original sin.[119] It served his purpose at the time, namely, to resist the corrosive effects of German idealism and theological liberalism. This conflict did not seem to bother Warfield either, who continued the same theological project at Princeton into the next generation. Warfield, for instance, emphasized the democratic perspicuity and commonsense hermeneutics of scripture, writing, “We have the Bible in our hands, and we are accustomed to reading it. . . . The proof of this is pervasive and level to the apprehension of every reader. It would be an insult to our intelligence were we to presume that we had not observed it, or could not apprehend its meaning.”[120] Warfield also wrote: “We follow the inductive method. When we approach the Scriptures to ascertain their doctrine . . . we proceed by collecting the whole body of relevant facts.” Because Warfield assumed the complete internal coherence and communicative transparency of scripture, he was able to assert, “The issue is not, what does the Bible teach? but, Is what the Bible teaches true?”[121] Given his doctrine of biblical inspiration, the answer for Warfield was, obviously, yes.
These quotes of Hodge and Warfield are among their weakest; elsewhere they do write with greater sophistication on these matters.[122] But as their teachings later passed through the scorching flames of the modernist-fundamentalist battles of the early twentieth century, it was often their weaker, more simplistic ideas that shaped the thinking of subsequent generations of evangelicals. The problematic influence of Hodge and Warfield on evangelical biblicism is evident today.
For instance, Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, which has become a standard text in many theology classes in evangelical seminaries, colleges, and universities, says, “Systematic theology involves collecting and understanding all the relevant passages in the Bible on various topics and then summarizing their teachings clearly so that we know what to believe about each topic. . . . It attempts to summarize the teachings of Scripture in a brief, understandable, and very carefully formulated statement.”[123] G. K. Beale’s attempted refutation of Peter Enns’s Old Testament scholarship in his The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority actually suggests that the Bible does not need to be interpreted, that—in contrast to a “subjective” view, in which the scriptural interpreter makes “precarious” judgments about truths scripture teaches—the truths of the Bible are objectively evident.[124]
Such views are intelligible only within the larger presupposed framework of Scottish commonsense realism, the Baconian theory of science, and the picture theory of language. Yet these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophies and outlooks have subsequently proved to be untenable—and for good reasons. They simply do not work, not for evangelicals or for anyone else. They are erroneous. Perception, knowledge, science, and language do not function in the real world the way these theories say they do. To build scriptural theological orthodoxy on them is therefore to build on a foundation of sand.
Language, for instance, does indeed correspond in some way to objects and does represent thoughts—but not in any simple, direct, unambiguous, picturelike way. Language operates as a different dimension of reality than most material and mental objects, and in its usage often entails significant ambiguity, complexity, and polysemy. Furthermore, “the facts”—natural, biblical, or otherwise—usually do not simply present themselves to human perceivers and knowers as obvious, unmediated entities. All human knowledge is conceptually mediated in ways that require the active interpretation and signification of the knower. Interpretation, among other things, means judging among the various possibilities the best or most compelling meanings that are attributable to the signs or texts. And that is not an infallible process—it requires uncertain human judgment.
All interpretations are also shaped by the particular historical and cultural locations and interests of the interpreters. Often what may be the best interpretation is underdetermined by the relevant empirical sign, text, or evidence—so more than one possible interpretation is reasonably plausible, and thus different interpreters find themselves convinced to adopt different interpretations. Moreover, science is not simply about inductively and objectively piecing together specimens gathered from the world in order to identify big-picture laws. Rather, for starters, science always operates within informing theoretical paradigms and epistemic communities of inquiry, which govern definitions of problems to solve and the kind of evidence that might solve them.
Furthermore, science (as correctly defined by critical realism) is ultimately about explaining causal processes that are normally not empirically observable, which requires heavy loads of theoretical work, including not only the logical operations of induction and deduction but also retrodiction and abduction. The latter turn out to be the least definitive ways of knowing and so open up multiple possibilities for interpretation and disagreement. In most scientific work, it is usually what is going on behind the evident facts that is most interesting and important—yet that is not always entirely clear to the observer.
Digging two centuries deeper than Hodge and Warfield, Carlos Bovell’s By Good and Necessary Consequence provides a fascinating genealogical study of “biblicist foundationalism.”[125] In it Bovell shows through historical analysis that the “by good and necessary consequence” clause of the Westminster Confession of Faith—which contributes an important intellectual plank supporting contemporary evangelical biblicism—was not an inheritance from early church fathers or even the original Protestant Reformers. Rather, it was quite a novel theological move by the Westminster divines in response to a widespread seventeenth-century philosophical skepticism, with origins in the late Renaissance, that defined all reliable knowledge as deductively derived from absolutely certain premises. The ideal model for such indubitable knowledge was mathematics. Thus, it was a particularly skeptical philosophical context in the seventeenth century that drove Protestant theologians of the day to derive all Christian theological knowledge from scriptural propositions and their logical deductions in a way that mimicked Cartesian foundationalist epistemology—a move that is both philosophically naive and out of place in the contemporary context. This larger intellectual lineage, Bovell shows, can be traced from Westminster through Hodge and Warfield and up to contemporary evangelical biblicist assumptions and practices today.
All of this means that the philosophical assumptions on which Hodge and Warfield built their theologies of the Bible are seriously problematic. This need not lead us to general epistemic skepticism or force us into Kantian idealism, arbitrary subjectivism, or theological liberalism—there are better alternatives to those options. One in particular, I think, is critical realism. But neither do these problems let stand as acceptable Scottish commonsense realism, Baconian inductive-empirical science, or the picture theory of language.
To insist in the name of Christian theological orthodoxy on preserving these outdated and flawed philosophical positions in order to underwrite a particular approach to the Bible is counterproductive and intellectually obscurantist. If anything, the fact that biblicism was built upon these naive philosophical positions shows from yet another angle how problematic it is. Again, biblicism simply does not work, even taken on its own terms. This brief historical inquiry helps to explain why: biblicism presupposed a set of philosophical assumptions about language, perception, knowledge, and science that were rightly abandoned by informed thinkers a long time ago. Biblicists apparently have not yet entirely realized that or come to terms with its implications.
Why Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism Is Not More Troubling to Biblicists: Sociological and Psychological Conjectures
If what I have said in this book so far is true, one would think that biblicists would be deeply troubled by interpretive pluralism and the implications it has for the biblicist theory of scripture, revelation, and truth. But for the most part they are not. Most biblicists carry on with unperturbed confidence in biblicist assumptions and beliefs, paying little attention to the ramifications of multiple counterclaims about rival biblical teachings. Why and how can this be? The answers are multiple, and I can offer only conjectures about some of the possibilities here.
One possibility concerns the structure of social networks among biblicists. We know sociologically that the principle of “homophily” (love for and attraction to what is similar to oneself) is one of the strongest forces operating in social life. As a result, biblicists (and most other Christians) who interpret the Bible in the same way have a very strong tendency to cluster together into homogeneous social networks of similarly believing people. One name for that when it is institutionalized is “Protestant denominations.” Most people—including most biblicists—tend to live in relatively “small” worlds, in the subcultures and social circles with which they are most at home and comfortable. Homophily is powerful this way—even the most seemingly “cosmopolitan” people tend actually to live in parochial worlds. In fact, empirical research shows that evangelicals tend to live in more religiously homogeneous worlds than most (though not all) other religious Americans.[126] For biblicists these relatively small worlds can function as effective “plausibility structures” to sustain the “reality” and believability of their particular assumptions and convictions[127]—as the same small worlds that most everyone else, including atheists and adherents of every other belief system, do for them.
We also know sociologically that people’s personal perceptions, concerns, and evaluations are strongly shaped by the social networks in which their lives are embedded. The more homogenous a person’s social network is, the more likely he or she is to take the characteristics and assumed viewpoints of the people in that social network for granted, and they increasingly lose touch with the distinctive, visceral realities of the lifestyles and beliefs of people in other, different social networks. As experienced with the matter under consideration here, most biblicists know in theory that other Christians out there read the Bible differently and think that it teaches different things. But, lacking ongoing, significant social contact and interaction with many of those other Christians, the differences between them can easily recede into abstract notions operating far in the background of everyday life concerns.
When a believer lives largely within the world of the Presbyterian Church of America, for example, others, such as independent Freewill Baptists, evangelical Mennonites, and orthodox Anglicans, can seem millions of miles away. Moreover, people—biblicist and otherwise—can and often do limit the diversity of their network ties to minimize people quite unlike them, precisely in order to reduce the existential discomfort of having to deal with contradictory beliefs, values, and commitments that such ties normally entail.
Another reason why pervasive interpretive pluralism may not trouble more biblicists is the common tendency among them to minimize the real differences of interpretation and the significance of those differences. Ask a biblicist about the matter and a common response is, “Well, yeah, but most of those disagreements are about minor issues. On important matters most of us pretty much read the Bible as teaching similar things.” Such a response is natural for American evangelicals, who comprise a transdenominational religious movement that has sought to transcend its differences in order to work together toward certain common activities and goals, particularly evangelism, world missions, and “ministries of mercy.” It is also a highly useful response for protecting biblicism from the problems of interpretive pluralism.
But this response is in the end a form of denial. It is simply not true. It is like a member of a dysfunctional, conflict-ridden family telling her friends that, “Yeah, we all get along pretty well in our family.” Disagreements among biblicists (and other Bible-referring Christians) about what the Bible teaches on most issues, both essentials and secondary matters, are many and profound. If biblicists hope to maintain intellectual honesty and internal consistency, they must acknowledge them and explain them.
A third possible reason why pervasive interpretive pluralism may not trouble biblicists as much as we might expect it to—a reason moving in the opposite direction and at a different level from the previous one—concerns the social functions gained by interacting with groups one disagrees with in particular ways. Establishing difference from others is a primary way that people and groups come to understand their own identities and continue to mobilize resources. Having an “other” from whom one is different helps one to know who one is and why one is committed to that particular self. The Duke and North Carolina basketball programs, for instance, need each other, even as they hate each other, simply to help promote the being and identity of Duke and North Carolina. The same with Notre Dame and Michigan or USC football. I have argued at length elsewhere that this general identity-formation-through-difference-and-tension mechanism helps to explain the vitality of many religious groups in the United States, especially American evangelicals.[128]
If this is correct, then it has two consequences for the religious groups involved. First, different communities of faith come to “need” others with whom they disagree in order to help sustain their internal identity commitments. Every group within a larger religious ecology becomes dependent on those they oppose in part to sustain their own existence and sense of distinct self. Once that kind of sociological dynamic is generated, rivals become perversely invested in the ongoing existence of each other, however much they oppose each other, because the other serves the identity and commitment purposes of the self, whether personal or collective. Biblicists may thus oddly come somewhat subconsciously to resist the idea of the biblical differences among them actually being settled. For without the many stimulating skirmishes and conflicts that those differences generate—such as “biblical patriarchs” resisting “biblical feminists,” vice versa, and the like—life in the faith would come to seem so much less vital and interesting. So, biblicists may not be very troubled by interpretive pluralism because many draw much of the strength of their ecclesial and perhaps personal lives from policing the symbolic boundaries that those differences create.
Second, building in-group identity and commitment through difference from out-groups has the almost inevitable effect of each group ceasing to take the substantive claims and positions of those out-groups seriously. The point becomes not to understand the other’s reasons, perspectives, and beliefs, or to honor them as fellow believers and come to a deeper understanding and perhaps resolution of differences. The point, rather, is to remain on guard from being contaminated by the out-group or allowing them to grow in influence. And in that process the other is very easily turned into an impersonal, two-dimensional caricature. Out-groups are reduced to an abstract “them” whose beliefs are abridged into a few bullet points of greatest disagreement, which need not actually be taken seriously on their own terms but rather simply need to be refuted and discredited as a means to validate the views of one’s own group. In this way, differences between Christian groups cease to be existentially troubling facts that divide Christians. Instead they become dismissible ideas of people far away, ideas already known to be wrong.
The above two points are reinforced by the complicating third point that many American evangelicals—especially those shaped by the church-growth movement—assume that numerical growth in a congregation indicates spiritual strength and vitality, which, in turn, indicates possession of the truth. Numerical growth, the assumption suggests, can be taken as an empirical indicator that the Holy Spirit is present and working and leading a congregation into the right beliefs. God must be “blessing” such a spiritually vibrant and faithful church with increased numbers of visitors and members. The logic is faulty, of course. If it were true, then it would commend evangelicals to convert to Mormonism, which has very impressive growth statistics.[129] Swelling membership roles may have nothing at all to do with spiritual vitality or faithfulness or truth—particularly not in a mass-consumerist, therapeutically driven culture such as ours in the United States. For present purposes, however, the larger point is simply this: various Christian groups “benefit” from conflict, disunity, and fragmentation and use such disagreement and distinction from others to build and sustain their in-group strength. This practice, even if common, is highly problematic when considered in light of what the Bible says about Christian unity.
A fourth possible reason explaining why biblicists are not more troubled by pervasive interpretive pluralism is rather more simple. It concerns “cognitive transitivity” between cultural objects. Stated simply, this reason is reflected in the following syllogism: Overcoming biblical and theological differences toward Christian unity sounds like “ecumenism.” Ecumenism sounds like liberal Protestantism. And liberal Protestantism is bad. Therefore overcoming biblical and theological differences toward Christian unity is itself suspect by association with liberalism. Better, suggests this emotional-cognitive logic, to be divided in absolute commitment to truth than to be unified in flaccid, liberal compromise. In this way, the experience of pervasive interpretive pluralism and division becomes (again, perversely) a badge of honor on behalf of orthodoxy and integrity. We may be utterly fragmented, biblicists tell themselves, but at least we have not compromised.
There is another possible explanation that is more psychological than sociological. I have no interest in psychoanalyzing individual biblicists, but I think it is fair to say that the general psychological structure underlying biblicism is one of a particular need to create order and security in an environment that would be otherwise chaotic and in error. That orientation seems itself to be driven by fear of disorder and discomfort with things not being “the way they ought to be.” Aversion to disorder and falsehood is a common human trait. But some people evidence it more strongly than others. I suspect that there is a correlation between this trait and attraction to biblicism.
To be clear, this is not some kind of psychologically reductionistic way to deny that biblicists genuinely believe theologically and biblically what they profess to believe. They of course do. But beliefs are always set in historical, sociological, and psychological contexts—in this case, for instance, the heritage of the modernist-fundamentalist battles of the early twentieth century—which shape them and perhaps help motivate them in ways that are not always recognized. Understood in this way, then, biblicism may represent a particular effort to prevent what biblicists perceive to be ever-menacing external and internal threats to order, security, and certainty. This response would not be inexplicable or crazy, given the real challenge of sustaining what is believed to be an orthodox gospel in a modern and postmodern world of change, unbelief, liberalism, and relativism. Yet as a fundamental psychological orientation, most evangelicals would also concede that it seems to fail to reflect a robust belief in God’s sovereign, benevolent control and faith that the Holy Spirit will ultimately lead the church into truth. In its worst expression, the psychological complex driving biblicism expresses an outright lack of trust in God and a grasping for human control. And that hardly seems biblical.
In any case, if this explanation has any merit, biblicism’s need to create order and security to shield against chaos and error could be so powerful that it overrides concerns about pervasive interpretive pluralism. In fact, in such cases, biblicism may itself function psychologically as a primary mechanism for denying or containing the apparent chaos and error generated by pervasive interpretive pluralism.
Whether any or all five possible explanations for the lack of evident distress among biblicists about pervasive interpretive pluralism are valid does not much matter for my larger argument. Even so, pondering for a moment the puzzling fact that most biblicists seem quite content to live with extensive disagreement about what is “biblical” on most issues may help to shed light on the larger matter in question.
In any case, it is time to return more directly to biblicism’s problems in the next chapter.