It's actually amazing how little people know about fundamentalist Christians these days, considering that the media would have us believe we're hip deep in them. I'm not going to go into the difference between fundamentalists, pentecostals, and evangelicals (unless somebody really needs to know), but I think it is worth spending a few minutes on the concept of literal biblical inerrancy. You know, the folks who believe that the Bible is not only the "word of God" but the objective, literal history of everything that happened. Nothing in the narrative portions of the Bible is anything but narrative that means exactly what it says, and is 100% truthful history.
The really interesting thing about biblical inerrancy is that it is a relatively new (and, I suspect, transient) phenomenon in Christiantiy. From the earliest times virtually every biblical commentator emphasized the need to 'interpret' the narrative. This is especially true of Christians who have to completely re-interpret the Jewish Testament in order to make it predict the appearance of Jesus.
In the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity you cannot find a major (or even minor) biblical commentator who believes in biblical literalism. That's why the Catholic and Orthodox churches (both of which depend on the concept of Apostolic succession) created a formal priesthood whose major job was to tell people what the bible meant. (In many areas of immediate pre-Reformation Europe, even the ownership of bibles was actually discouraged by the church.)
One of the consequences of the Protestant Reformation was the urge to dispense with professional or appointed clergy. People would read the bible for themselves. Of course many people did not read at all, and those that did tended to be pretty unsophisticated in the towns and villages. Don't confuse matters with sticky questions of interpretation, that's why we sent those damn papists packing!
In order to get rid of a hierarchical clergy but not substitute an unruly mob of bible-interpreting farmers for it, the simplest answer was to deny that the bible had any other possible meaning than the common sense literal meaning. Do that and nobody has to interpret it for you. Of course this means you have to dismiss 1,500 years of nuanced theological interpretation as well.
So the next time you face someone who purports to speak for the word of God (maybe even in a You-Tube debate), and you don't feel like just turning and walking away, ask that person why their church is insistent that everybody else screwed up te first 1500 years of Christianity.
Only don't do it near a smoke detector.
The really interesting thing about biblical inerrancy is that it is a relatively new (and, I suspect, transient) phenomenon in Christiantiy. From the earliest times virtually every biblical commentator emphasized the need to 'interpret' the narrative. This is especially true of Christians who have to completely re-interpret the Jewish Testament in order to make it predict the appearance of Jesus.
In the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity you cannot find a major (or even minor) biblical commentator who believes in biblical literalism. That's why the Catholic and Orthodox churches (both of which depend on the concept of Apostolic succession) created a formal priesthood whose major job was to tell people what the bible meant. (In many areas of immediate pre-Reformation Europe, even the ownership of bibles was actually discouraged by the church.)
One of the consequences of the Protestant Reformation was the urge to dispense with professional or appointed clergy. People would read the bible for themselves. Of course many people did not read at all, and those that did tended to be pretty unsophisticated in the towns and villages. Don't confuse matters with sticky questions of interpretation, that's why we sent those damn papists packing!
In order to get rid of a hierarchical clergy but not substitute an unruly mob of bible-interpreting farmers for it, the simplest answer was to deny that the bible had any other possible meaning than the common sense literal meaning. Do that and nobody has to interpret it for you. Of course this means you have to dismiss 1,500 years of nuanced theological interpretation as well.
So the next time you face someone who purports to speak for the word of God (maybe even in a You-Tube debate), and you don't feel like just turning and walking away, ask that person why their church is insistent that everybody else screwed up te first 1500 years of Christianity.
Only don't do it near a smoke detector.
Comments
Couldn't you ask the same question of Protestants in general, and not just Fundamentalists?