Now, I’ll agree that that sounds unnecessarily cut-and-dried. Does it work or not? The end, period. Who cares if you’re from Saudi Arabia, or Iowa, or Timbuktu, the book either works or it doesn’t, period. Obviously, that’s nonsense. There are a lot of things that come into play when we judge the efficacy of a thing, and context is hugely important. This is one of the other arguments in support of Universalism, and one of the things that I think the Pentecost Effect is a metaphor for–the miracle of Pentecost is not saying “God will intervene to make you understood” but rather “the message–that is to say, ‘Love and do good,’ must be transmitted in such a way not that mandates the listener change to accommodate it, but rather in such a way that it accommodates the nature of the listener.”

But, in any case, now it remains to say, “What is the point of a religious document?” And, pursuant to your belief, I think, “What is the point of the Resurrection?” Because I think that there is a profound difference between saying, “The Resurrection IS the point,” which necessarily yields a “Believe in Jesus or go to Hell” conclusion, and “The Resurrection is the illustration of a point.” Did Jesus die and resurrect so that we would know Jesus? Or did Jesus die and resurrect so that we would love and do good?

If it’s the former, then it’s hard to argue that Christian literature is anything but the most effective. If it’s the latter, then all documents who take it as their purpose to teach love and goodness can be judged by how effectively they do so–the Bible’s value is not diminished because other documents do the same thing; but the Bible’s value IS diminished if other documents do the same thing better. (Here, context matters a lot: obviously, the Bible may be superior in certain circumstances to The Iliad. Potentially, in certain circumstances, it may not be.)

The peril, obviously, of Universalism is a loss of focus. If all we care about, really, is that people love each other, then who gives a crap if they learn it from the Bible or from Moby-Dick? Do you? Does God? And if God doesn’t, then what is the point of a church that instructs its disciples to accommodate its principles, as opposed to a Church that accommodates itself to its disciples? The question, I think, is interesting.

Moreover, we run into a fascinating question of cognitive dissonance. As you’ve pointed out, ambiguities inherent in the Biblical text (and, certainly, among all similarly agglomerative texts) mean that the engagement with moral issues is stronger, and therefore the fact of belief in those issues is stronger.

But is this necessarily ideal? Is it better for a person to believe a good thing weakly, or a bad thing strongly? If years and years of Bible study have taught you that homosexuality is evil, then cognitive dissonance will make it virtually impossible for you to unlearn that position. You have become, essentially, uneducable, and therefore unable to do good where it is needed. Of course, by contrast, if you’ve learned good only weakly, your faith provides no shield against poisonous rhetoric.

Also interesting. I don’t know.

As far as judging by efficacy goes, y’know, it’s not a binary proposition. Saying, “Oh, well, this document also says these things that the Bible says” doesn’t diminish the value of the Bible, really. Moreover, it’s really tenuous ground, because I’m not sure how we would judge “efficacy,” given that part of the discussion is over what’s important to get out of a religious document, or a religion, or life in the first place.

And, of course, the Question of Evil is, you’re right, a dead-end. I just agree with Carl that the way we describe something is instrumental to the way that we think about it, and it is therefore incorrect to say that God’s perfect will is manifested imperfectly in the imperfect world. It is more accurate to say that God’s will is manifested perfectly–it only appears imperfect to us because we don’t understand it. So, to say that God’s will is interpreted insufficiently by his stenographers is equally inaccurate: they wrote the Gospels down exactly the way God wanted them to, because the universe cannot progress in any way except the way that God wants it to. I only think that this is important because of the position of privilege that the Bible has: certainly, it purports to be the Word of God, but so do many other things and some of those things must necessarily be false, and it is God’s will that those things be practically indistinguishable from each other.

I believe that this is the strong argument in favor of Universalism.

So, when we talk about the weight that the Iliad carries–and it isn’t precisely fair to say that it doesn’t purport to be the Word of God, as it does purport to be the word of a god, just not one that you happen to believe in–we have to accept the fact that the universe is expressly designed to give no more seeming credence to a document that pretends to be the word of god than a document that actually is the word of god.

In that case, correctly establishing privilege is impossible, and the only way to judge a document’s legitimacy is by its efficacy, and in that case, there is a wealth of literature equally relevant to moral and spiritual understanding as the bible.

I’m not that certain about perfection having to be a universal condition. I know that’s the old ontological argument and all, but “perfection” seems to me to be an awfully nebulous term, one that’s even more impossible (the AP stylebook would have issues with “more impossible”) for us to really grasp than the concept of infinity.

Anyway, the “Why can’t God just do what He wants?” questions, whether we mean communicating clearly or the problem of evil, seem like dead-enders to me. It seems clear to me that all the annoying and awful shit (not knowing what God meant, or even if there is a God; the fact that children get killed in typhoons; etc.) is built into our existence. Like, it’s fundamental to the point. Y’know, you don’t write a story that goes, “Once upon a time, everything was perfect, and then it stayed perfect, and when something bad happened, it went away instantly. The End.” The conditions of finity and entropy are built into our universe, and irritation and pain and death are an unavoidable function of them. I don’t see how you could have real growth or change without them.

And I appreciate the mind-set that says in response to this, “WTF, God?” Like, why does God need to built a creation that grows and changes, then? And this, maybe, is the big point on which one’s faith or lack thereof hinges: As a believer, I think, Well, this Creator beyond Time and Space has His reasons, and no matter how smart I am, there’s never going to be enough information available to me to understand. And maybe as someone who doesn’t believe, you think, Fuck you, that’s not OK. I want answers. I get that. I can see how my willingness to concede to an unseen force can look like weakness or stupidity (not that I think you are saying that, but I can see how you or someone else might). But I still put it to you that I don’t think you, or I, or Stephen King can conceive of an imperfect world in which the perfect is manifested perfectly.

We could do Pentecost over and over, maybe, but then why not do Cana over and over, too? And curing of the sick and raising of the dead? And loaves and fishes? I’m not sure how that would differ significantly from Perfect World, where nothing ever really changes. And as far as God delivering answers clearly, what I was trying to get at the with the post, and what I think a lot of theologians have ultimately gotten at, is that while we may be focused on wanting answers, the questioning process is actually what’s important. This is annoying, because we like having a clear endpoint to get to; but it’s also realistic, because rarely do we encounter any experiences with clear endpoints, until we die . And yeah, like you say, the same process can be applied to the Iliad and other works. But nevertheless, they don’t carry the weight that a work does that purports to be the Word of God.

So, that was long and rambly.

Anyway, I don’t know that I’ve really anything to add, here, as my super-close readings have all been on different texts than biblical ones, but I think that that itself serves as an important point.

The question that I have is, given that the text does not provide a clear answer, but rather the fodder for which engaged disputation can occur–doesn’t that mean that the answers we’re arriving at are not a part of the text itself, but a result of the act of study? This is a personal act, and can be executed on any text of sufficient complexity. Is The Iliad a subject less suited to disputational engagement than the Bible? In fact, the Iliad has many of the same elements that Carl regards as appealing–it was manufactured over time by an oral tradition, rather than being the product of a single revelatory incident. Its recounters were seen as “ethusiastic”–that is, “filled with divine power” when they related it (literally: “in-Godded”). It’s a document of fascinating moral complexity, especially in regards to the cut-and-dried legal culture in which it was popular (uhm, 7th and 8th century Athens, mostly), without providing any specific moral answers.

I don’t actually know the Catholic position, so I’d be curious about it–I had the feeling that faith–as a kind of condition of spiritual humility in the face of a supernatural power–was a hallmark of divine contact, regardless of the religion of the faithful. Does that mean that a document like the Iliad, or the Qu’ran (which, despite what Muslims believe, was an agglomerate work of many, many people), if they were composed in a condition of faithfulness or “enthusiasm” could be similarly divinely-inspired?

And, of course, once you’ve opened up the fact that the Gospels were composed after the resurrection, and God most necessarily have been somehow involved in the translation process, you have to seriously ask the question as to why it was that Revelation is the last, and necessarily the last, divinely-revealed text. (Obviously, some people–like the Mormons–don’t believe that.)

It’s a tricky question!

The other question that I have is that if Christ is throwing out the legal statutes that apply to divorce, is he similarly discarding the legal statutes that apply to marriage? One of the significant problems that we have in modern society is a confusion between marriage as a legal arrangement and marriage as a divine concordance–in American, the two situations necessarily have no bearing on each other. If we’re suggesting that the Pharisees are not permitted to divide what God has joined, does that mean that we’re suggesting equally that the Pharisee do not have the power to join in the first place?

Given that, all marriage is then a personal, spiritual relationship between to people, regardless of what secular or clerical authorities have to say on the subject. Priests are not God, and therefore cannot act with God’s power–we know from experience that priests, unlike God, can be mistaken, and can therefore err when they perform a marriage. Under those circumstances–that is, the circumstances under which a priest has joined two people together when God himself has not–well, you’d think divorce would be okay.

Maybe that’s what anullments are for? I always found anullments to be unnecessarily complicated.

And finally, I don’t buy that God’s instructions never need to be anything but clear. If God didn’t want to confuse people, he wouldn’t have. The idea that a perfect instruction can only be expressed imperfectly in an imperfect world suggests that God is incapable of acting perfectly in an imperfect world–that God’s only manifestation in the world is fundamentally imperfect. That doesn’t sound right, as perfection must be a universal condition. Besides, we already know that the gospel can be delivered in a miraculous way that is perfectly clear and comprehensible to anyone that listens to it. If God were really serious about making people believe, why doesn’t he just perform the miracle of Pentecost over and over?

@ Moff – Agreed, the marriage teaching is somewhat jarring from our vantage point. I think part of it may be that, generally, when Christ speaks in absolutes, he deals in matters etheral, spiritual, and internal, not civil and practical. (Render unto Cesar whatever you guys decide amongst yourselves to render unto guy, I want your hearts.) Otherwise, when absolutes are involved, the Christian tradition ascribes figurative meaning to his words. This business about marriage seems to be an exception to the rule (if you take Christ at his word— and you may not— perfectly acceptable way to go too). And if that’s the case, for me, the marraige teaching sticks out like a sore thumb tonally, demanding special attention.

Because Christianity is a religion of creeds not laws— that is, what we believe about the way things in the world are and should be, and not what we are commanded to do, or else— ruminating on scripture always leads me towards principals. Can I give these passages a principal-once over, real quick?

Mark 9:43-48 doesn’t have anything to do with marriage, of course, but with the wages of sin. I understand the desire to link up the two discussions of the importance of flesh, but flesh is clearly being used in two very different ways here. In Mark 10, its used metaphorically to describe a shared state of being. But my wife Meredith and I AREN’T one flesh! Nothing’s been grafted onto her from me. We aren’t symboits, right? We’re not two consciousnesses coexisting in single body? The metaphor is employed to explain the absolute indivisibility of the unity of marriage, from Christ’s perspective— as though you are one person, inseparable in all ways that matter. You can’t divide your body in half and go your merry ways any more than you can your spirits after the unison of marriage. But in the Mark 9, he seems to be talking about actual flesh. If any part of your body is leading you into sin in any way, you’re better off cutting it off than sinning. Though he’s talking about literal flesh, the tradition generally treats this passage hyperbolically. I guess you don’t have to, necessarily. But I can’t think of any Christian pastors or priests that I know who are advocating physically tearing your eyes out as an appropriate response to visiual stimuli. The point seems to be: sin is serious and damaging, avoid at all costs, no matter what, to the fullest extent of your powers. Maybe you disagree that these are the principals of these passages. But if you agree, then I’m not sure that these principals are mutually instructive or intended as interelated, and so the contradiction between devices used in them is probably illusory.

Luke 9:57-62 and the corresponding Matthew passage are harder, but I think Mark 10:29-30 might clue us in. There is a presumption there that you DON’T want to leave your family. That being away from your family is painful and costly— the most painful and costly thing possible, save death. But to sacrafice what you love— being at home with your loved ones— in the service of Christ is a spectacular act of selflessness and means of grace. Moreoever, being away from your family for a time is very different from dissolving the family entirely. This question comes up all the time with the Apostles, right? How could they just up and leave their families and wander out across the region after this guy? How could Christ condone that being done? But we make a whole series of presumptions about that that are not scripturally founded. At this period in history, men went away to war for decades of their lives because they had to, without accusation of abandonment of their families— certainly without dissolving their families as is done through divorce. Provisions were made, they made their sarafices abroad, and then, if they were lucky, they came home. Pete, John, Simon— not so lucky. So it seems like the distinction about intention plays a large part here.

The fact that Christ of the Absolutes shows up in a discussion of something so practical and routine as marriage might lead us to conclude that it isn’t just a practical and routine matter, but one of monumental spiritual import.

I don’t think I claimed that there aren’t specific instances of revelation. In fact, I lean toward believing there are. (But from a practical standpoint, I don’t know if it’s ever a topic worth addressing in an open discussion or trying to defend — it’s an unfalsifiable question.)

Not ‘instances of revelation’ but ‘instances of “clear instruction…that can be generally applied” is what you wrote. And yeah, I think there are some, and that its worth discussing— which was kind of the point of your post in the first place— to see what we can derive from what we’ve received, both individually and in larger communities of worshippers.

Jesus’s ultimate message was “You’re still loved and forgiven, adulterers.”

Which is more important than any of the rest of this crap.

(I swear I’m done. But thanks for giving a sick guy something to do with his time on an otherwise shitty day.)