CHAPTER 2
SCRIPTURE AS A DANGEROUS RELIGIOUS IDEA
What is scripture? Dictionaries define it simply as a body of religious writings considered sacred or authoritative. This description hardly conveys the wide-ranging influence scripture has had in human affairs. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith explained, “The role of scripture in human life has been prodigious—in social organization and in individual piety, in the preservation of community patterns and in revolutionary change, and of course in art and literature and intellectual outlook.” He acknowledged that the historical impact of scripture has been mixed, at times elevating the human spirit and challenging society to live up to its highest values, while in other instances serving as justification for oppression and moral blindness.1 As such, it falls squarely into the purview of this study of dangerous religious ideas. Since many other religious ideas find articulation or validation within scripture, we take it up first.
Trying to discern what is common to scriptures across civilizations, Smith asserted that it is not a shared quality or type of text but rather the ongoing relationship between each text and a particular community. If we focus on how Jews, Christians, and Muslims relate to Bible and Qur’an, an obvious commonality is that the canonized texts are interpreted by the communities who deem them sacred. Arguments about meaning are recorded in the earliest layers of commentary and continue in every age. There is no reading that is not an interpretation, and some are clearly problematic; as Shakespeare noted, even “the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”2Thus, when dangers of scripture are discussed, they generally invoke or presume particular interpretations.
This chapter, however, addresses a far more fundamental problem with scripture. It is an issue of ideology and theology, not merely of hermeneutics (methods of interpretation). The idea of scripture is dangerous. As long as there is scripture, people will wield the word as a weapon against each other in order to justify their own biases. As long as there is scripture, we have to reckon with the painful silences of those voices left out of the canon. As long as there is scripture, some people will turn their back on other God-given ways of knowing.
Of course, scripture is not simply an idea. As described in the previous chapter, it is translated into action through exegesis, ritual, and communal embodiment. Every aspect of religion’s work in the human psyche and society is evident in the relationship with scripture. We derive pleasure from its recitation, explication, and artistic representation. The words overflow with meaning and the texts have symbolic status in delineating culture and mediating divine presence.3 Manifesting our will to power, we may deploy scripture politically—as justification for policies, as evidence for moral claims, or as an instrument of cultural imperialism.4 Scripture’s role in sustaining community testifies to its adaptive value as it lays the foundations for belief, behavior, and belonging.
SCRIPTURE’S ABIDING RELEVANCE AND AUTHORITY: DANGER AND PROMISE
The continuing relevance of Bible or Qur’an, stable in a sea of change, is undoubtedly one of its strengths. It is the sacred story that binds adherents together and shapes their purpose. As a “control” of the human experiment, scripture can test the value of new ideas and serve as a check on our less worthy desires. Its authority can push human beings to grow in goodness, to transform society toward justice—with prophets who call us to account for our moral failings, visions of communities that tend to the poor and the stranger, ontological equality between the sexes, and images of a God overflowing with love and mercy.
Yet these same scriptures appear to sanction slavery and condemn same-sex intercourse. They present a God who punishes a number of crimes with exceeding harshness. They include passages that subordinate women and incorporate hateful depictions of some who stand outside the community.5 New religious communities frequently polemicize against established religions or peoples from whom they seek to distinguish themselves; once canonized in sacred texts, this hostility is automatically conveyed to future generations of believers long after the original conflict has ended.6 Here, the abiding relevance of scripture transforms historical tensions into eternal enmity.
Scripture’s permanence can stifle positive change. Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77), also known as Baruch, complained that people failed to distinguish between scripture’s timeless, universal teachings and those that were shaped by historical context: such “promiscuous” faith could not avoid “confounding the opinions of the masses with Divine doctrines . . . and making a wrong use of scriptural authority.”7 Attitudes toward sacred text have impeded embrace of scientific thought, pluralism, and social equity. The case of slavery presents an interesting example. Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an did not invent slavery, but all accepted it as an institution. Passages conveying concern about the condition of slaves (Lev. 25:35–55, Deut. 23:16–17, Philemon, Qur’an 4:36) prompted many critiques regarding poor treatment in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic era, but most people presumed scripture’s general sanction.8 Those who later tried to remove the stain of slavery from the American landscape cited the Bible’s passionate commitment to liberation in Exodus, its command to love the stranger, and its teaching that all human beings are created in the image of God. They maintained that scriptural texts making slavery more humane were meant as a stepping-stone toward universal emancipation—even though they could not point to a text that explicitly said so. More recently, Amina Wadud argued in similar fashion that discussion of slavery in Qur’an would never have led to its eradication in Islam, but the Qur’anic ethos of equity, justice, and human dignity catalyzed reform.9
This effort to distill overarching scriptural values undergirded abolitionist writings, while proslavery forces cited the Bible’s explicit discussion of slavery. The latter condemned their opponents’ “disregard of the authority of the word of God, a setting up of a different and higher standard of truth and duty, and a proud and confident wresting of scripture to suit their own purposes.”10 Systemic racism and the economics of slave labor undoubtedly drove opposition to change, but slavery’s existence in sacred text perpetuated the oppression. It took a long time and a bloody Civil War for “new” ideas of universal emancipation to win the day. Both proslavery and antislavery arguments, however, reinforced the danger of scripture by presuming that we can find verses in the texts to prove God is on our side.
Scripture’s authority is traditionally traced to God, either as human reflections of divine teaching or as God’s Word itself. Within Islam, for instance, orthodox faith maintains that the angel Jibreel (Gabriel) conveyed the divine message directly to Muhammad: “Muslims believe that the Qur’an is a flawlessly reliable source of truth because it is the accurately preserved record of the words of the Living God.”11 Hebrew Bible and New Testament, which contain a broader range of material (prophecy, historical narrative, law, psalms, gospel testimony, letters) were still understood to have their source in God through a combination of revelation and inspiration. In 2 Timothy 3:16, the sacred texts are described as theopneustos, literally “God-breathed.” Divine imprimatur also undergirds scripture’s claim to abiding influence: “Because the authority of Scripture lies not in itself but in the living God to whom it points, such authority is not confined to the past but continues in the present.”12
Consequently, the presence of an idea in scripture can override our own moral instincts, as it claims a higher law. Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an privilege devotion to God’s will over one’s own, and that will is expressed through scripture. Even though there are passages that affirm the moral stature of humanity, including striking examples in Tanakh that portray individuals challenging God on ethical grounds (e.g., Job, Abraham), traditional notions of scripture frequently emphasize how our flawed instincts must be disciplined through the text. In fact, one critique Qur’an levels at Jews and Christians is that they distorted their scriptures and deified their leaders (5:13–14, 9:31). In a famous hadith, a Christian contests the idea that they worship their religious authorities; Muhammad substantiates the charge by asserting that they forbid what God permitted and permit what God forbade, setting their own authority above God’s.13
Many claims of contemporary biblicists, like those articulated in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy at the 1978 Summit Conference of evangelical leaders, continue to insist on scriptural ultimacy, nullifying human perspectives that contradict its teaching: “Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches; it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.”14
Are there times when a reader with this view of scripture wants to disagree on ethical grounds, but feels constrained by its overriding authority? Robert Gagnon wrote about grappling with the hurt his fealty to scripture causes in his stance against queer sexuality: “Perhaps worst of all is the knowledge that a rigorous critique of same-sex intercourse can have the unintended effect of bringing personal pain to homosexuals, some of whom are already prone to self-loathing.”15 Does he act against that compassion because he believes God demands it—even though such views cause the suffering he laments? Does he maintain a notion of Kierkegaard’s “teleological suspension of the ethical,” a faith that scriptural instruction which runs counter to ethical convictions has a higher purpose?16 Or does the justification mask a preconceived bias, even an unconscious one? It is not certain whether people can be completely honest with themselves about their motivations in such a situation, but their discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals is rationalized scripturally.
Yet it is impossible to remove the human element from scriptural teaching. Everyone reads selectively. Much of scripture’s teaching is simply laid aside, and the rest is subject to uneven human attention and interpretation. Why do some people endorse the Bible’s capital punishment but not its redistribution of property in the jubilee? How is it that Muslim religious scholars of differing legal schools read the same text but disagree about its provisions for criminal justice, warfare, interreligious relations, and other vital issues? There is no unmediated encounter with the Word. It must be interpreted, and we tend to do so in keeping with our own values or interests—a reflection of our will to meaning and will to power exercised through religious texts. As George Bernard Shaw famously quipped, “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.”
Thus one danger of scripture’s ultimacy is that it takes human perspectives and grants them divine authority. Khaled Abou El Fadl described this brandishing of the Book as locking “the will of the divine will, the will of the text, into a specific determination and then presenting [it] as inevitable, final and conclusive.”17 It becomes a trump card. Feminist, queer, liberationist, and postcolonial critiques among others from the margins have illuminated how the history of interpretation emphasized certain teachings and ignored or reinterpreted others in order to perpetuate existing power structures and norms. Why were biblical and Qur’anic texts that seem to support patriarchy prominently deployed, for instance, while those showing women equal in creation, with moral courage and political and spiritual power, were not seen to have equally broad mandates?18 Why obsess over the few verses that may address same-sex intercourse when poverty or adultery are clearly much greater concerns within scripture? These contemporary scholars’ essential insights underscore the way human authority disguises itself as scriptural.
RECOGNIZING THE HUMAN ELEMENT
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions have long recognized the inescapable human element in determining scripture’s meaning and used it as a tool for self-critical faith. Piety does not demand that human beings forfeit their judgment but rather that they deploy it to defend against the dangers of scripture. Living in the Greco-Roman world around the turn of the Common Era and eager to show the philosophical brilliance of Torah, for example, Philo asserted that it must accord with reason: “In the poetic work of God you will not find anything mythical or fictional but the canons of truth all inscribed, which do not cause any harm.”19 Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd (twelfth century), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), all influenced by the resurgence of Hellenistic philosophy in the Middle Ages, similarly sought to affirm divine law as the embodiment of reason and truth—not by changing what they understood to be true, but by adapting what they understood to be scripture’s meaning.20
Early in their development, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam formalized the human extensions of scripture, which was essential to preserving scripture’s relevance and proved determinative in the history of interpretation. While their teachings are assigned secondary status compared to the unique transcendence of scripture, religious authorities attached a measure of scripture’s exalted status—its authority if not its sanctity—to these other sources.
Rabbinic Judaism identified its classical texts—Mishnah, Tosefta, the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, and collections of midrash (redacted in the second through sixth centuries CE)—as Oral Torah, imagining that their interpretive conclusions were transmitted verbally in a chain leading back to revelation at Sinai.21 Torah, which in its narrow sense refers to the Five Books of Moses as the perpetually privileged core of scripture, also became a referent for all of sacred learning. Since rabbinic Judaism eventually became normative for the vast majority of Jews, much of Jewish praxis today is shaped by the teachings of Oral Torah.
The Catholic Church grounded its authority in apostolic succession, tracing back to scripture, so that its councils, creeds, and canons were seen as uniquely sanctioned to advance Jesus’s charge to the apostles. Catholic magisterium was considered authoritative teaching.22 Augustine dismissed other claimants of that privilege, describing how the mandate of the Catholic Church “inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here.”23
Islam established the sunna, the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad, as a necessary corollary for discerning the right path after his death. Believed to be chosen by God not only to transmit the Qur’an but also to interpret and embody it according to Allah’s intentions, the prophet’s legacy serves as the authority for large portions of Islamic legal, theological, and popular religious traditions. The human hand in collecting these teachings is explicit, prompting a medieval version of critical textual analysis to determine the reliability of each hadith (saying) and story of the prophet’s life.24
These later texts played a critical role in forging a path for growth and dynamism within the traditions. There are numerous examples in which their interpretative methods discerned dangers and sought to defuse them. For example:
Rabbinic texts understood the biblical notion of “eye for an eye” as a system of restorative justice (m. B. Qam. 8, b. B. Qam. 83b): One is liable to compensate the injured party for pain, for time lost from work, for medical expenses, for any permanent loss in earning potential, and for emotional suffering. No reciprocal eye-gouging is involved.
Catholic canon law established a means by which an unhealthy marriage could be annulled, even though New Testament teaching was understood to demand a lifelong commitment. Since the sacrament is essentially effected by the spouses themselves (1057.1), a “defect” in the consent of one of them means that the binding power of the sacrament never took hold. At the same time, their putative marriage established their children as legitimate.25
The Qur’anic verse that appears to allow husbands to strike their wives if other methods of disciplining them are not effective (4:34) was mitigated by the sunna tradition: the Prophet Muhammad never struck his own wives. There are numerous hadiths brought to bear, limiting the circumstances, delineating the rights a woman is owed by her husband, and encouraging the model of the prophet: “The best of you are those who are the best to their wives, and I am the best of you to my wives.”26
In the contemporary context, historical-critical perspectives extend the human role to the creation of scripture itself. As human documents, the texts do not bear absolute authority, even if we imagine that they strain to discern God’s will. Scholarship like the documentary hypothesis, which identifies diverse authors and contexts for the Pentateuch, highlights evolving theologies and praxis. Scriptural statements about women, same-sex intercourse, slavery, and violence are recognized as reflections of the perspectives and power dynamics of the societies that generated the texts. Rather than dictating the eternal nature of these ethics, the scriptures invite us to interrogate our own. Seen as the work of human hands, it becomes harder to wield the sacred word as a weapon to cudgel those who disagree with or are different than us.
This protection comes at a price, however, often diminishing scripture’s capacity to transform. Many people begin to wonder whether these ancient books are really relevant to life today in any significant measure. Even among religious adherents who still read, study, and cite their holy books while embracing their human origins, can the Word command the spirit? While it may draw attention to our inadequate concern for the poor, for instance, can it inspire the requisite sacrifice to establish economic equity? If scripture is no longer the custodian of social ethics, then how can it effectively challenge the overweening corporatism, materialism, and militarism of the current age? The positive dangers of social critique, upending the status quo to fashion a better world, shrink once scripture is no longer seen as God’s blueprint for creation. Mahatma Gandhi once commented, “You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.” Its power to heal is bound up with its power to harm.
Neither traditional nor contemporary strategies provide a comprehensive solution to the dangers of scripture. Oral Torah, canon law, and the sunna were responsible for holding back progress on a range of issues and embedding the biases of their own eras within scriptural authority. Restrictions on women’s leadership, for example, are largely grounded in these later teachings. Historical-critical method similarly layered one flawed source of authority on top of another. With the rise of modern scholarship in the wake of the Enlightenment, the academy became a new arbiter of truth. Scholars falsely presumed that they could stand outside history to describe objective reality, thus obscuring their own agenda and social location.27 Displacing scripture’s ultimacy did not guarantee a freer flow of ideas; arguments about correct interpretation were often fierce, with dogmatism continuing to haunt the discourse. Old ways of thinking still infected academic methodology, adding the authority of “science” to their conclusions. One example is the adaptation of anti-Jewish teaching. A significant group of Bible scholars stopped the supersessionary practice of looking for ways to draw out Christian truths encoded in Hebrew Bible; instead, they sought to identify “the origins of Christian society’s present ills in the errors and superstitions of the Israelites and Jews.”28 Acknowledging the human hand in scripture does not fully dissolve the dangers.
Yet the academy also has the capacity for self-critique. Interrogating its methods and conclusions, scholars have helped to uncover how all interpretation is linked to the exercise of power. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza offered these reflexive questions: “How is meaning constructed, whose interests are served, what kind of worlds are envisioned, what roles, duties, and values are advocated, which socio-political practices are legitimated?”29
Those who reject the historical-critical method see the threat quite differently. Although many Jews and Christians embrace scripture as a human document and preserve a sense that their Bible is a sacred text, the theory was fiercely resisted when broached in the nineteenth century. It is still seen by many adherents to be an affront to their faith. The text they believe to be the inerrant teaching of God is rejected as such, and they resent feeling that people think their attitude is obscurantist or ill-informed. Within the Muslim community, the issue is bound up with the history of Western colonialism and concerns about Orientalist approaches to Islamic studies. Although Islam developed rigorous textual-critical tools in the Middle Ages, the idea that Qur’an is also the product of human hands rather than a perfectly transmitted revelation was first broached by non-Muslim academics and was often experienced as an attack against the faith. One Muslim scholar stated his objection quite forcefully:
The Orientalist enterprise of Qur’anic studies, whatever its other merits and services, was a project born of spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance: the spite of the powerful for the powerless, the frustration of the “rational” towards the “superstitious” and the vengeance of the “orthodox” against the “non-conformist.” At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith.30
Whether Western historical-critical Qur’anic studies have been the witting or unwitting accomplice of colonialism, there remains a fair deal of pressure for Islamic scholarship to embrace human authorship of Qur’an in order to participate fully in academic discourse. Even though there are other tools for practicing Muslims to engage the critical conversation, many derived from Islamic tradition, the tension around this question is still palpable.31 Nonetheless, the power of scripture need not be strangled in a problematic dichotomy between oppressive fundamentalism and academic supersessionism. Aware of the dangers, it is possible to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis by engaging more fully with the received tradition.
EXCAVATING THE TRADITIONS: DEEP ROOTS OF SELF-CRITICAL FAITH
Exploring the rich self-reflective capacity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the following chapters deliberately emphasize “precritical” resources within the traditions that mitigate against the dangers of scripture’s authority. They were not all derived for such a purpose, but all have served to refine the way scriptural power is wielded, even among those who feel they hold God’s word in their hands. Long before the rise of historical-critical scholarship, we find woven through traditional engagements with sacred texts an awareness of multivocality in scripture and its exegesis, the provisional nature of truth and the human role in discerning the Word, epistemological humility and the role of doubt in faith, consciousness of historical change and its impact on religious meaning—each moderating the use and abuse of scripture’s power.
Again, this part of the book is not about specific dangerous ideas within the sacred texts; examples of those will be addressed in subsequent sections. Having laid out the framework through which the idea of scripture can do harm, the next three chapters focus on the complex assortment of tools that might limit or prevent it. Different in each religion, close examination also reveals similarities. Thus, the traditions are examined independently in order to clarify the unique issues and articulations, but the methods are grouped in parallel fashion in order to highlight common ground as well. Chapter 6 then explores contemporary efforts to reckon with the power of scripture for good and ill and how they relate to the tools of self-critical faith—ending with a discussion of scripture and politics in the United States. Prescriptions of self-critical faith do not constitute a cure; the dangers remain salient. Instead, it is helpful to think of the strategies as treatments to manage the life-sustaining capacities of scripture and its life-threatening side effects, diverse parts of the inheritance of religious tradition.