Randal Rauser's Blog, page 43

Is There a Link Between Atheism and Skepticism?

There is a popular notion that doubt and skepticism are specially linked to atheism. But is that borne out by the evidence or is it just a bit of branding based on a limited selection of doubt?

It is also very common to find atheism being linked to skepticism. There is a popular narrative that traces the origins of skepticism back to ancient Greece when philosophers first began to doubt the existence of the gods as they had been popularly understood. One finds a reflection of the intimate link between skepticism and atheism in the fact that Jennifer Michael Hecht founds her book Doubt: A History on the theme of specifically religious doubt. She writes, “There are saints of doubt, martyrs of atheism, and sages of happy disbelief who have not been lined up as such, made visible by their relationships across time, and given the context of their story.” This link between skepticism or doubt and atheism carries through in Hecht’s “Scale of Doubt Quiz” which is intended to chart the reader’s degree of skepticism in thirteen questions. Included in the list are questions about whether one believes a particular religious tradition includes correct information about the nature of ultimate reality (question 1), whether an intelligent being created the universe (question 2), whether prayer is effective (question 4), and whether the experience of love and morality points to a dimension of existence beyond biology, social patterns, and chance (question 11). Answering all the questions negatively places you at the high skeptical end of Hecht’s scale meaning that “you’re a hard-core atheist and of a certain variety: a rational materialist.”

Note that Hecht’s quiz is structured so as to assume that assent to a robust system of religious doctrine is equivalent to “belief” while failure to accept the various doctrines that tend to comprise that system is equivalent to “doubt.” Insofar as people tend to equate a higher degree of skepticism with higher rationality, the result is to equate higher rationality with stronger doubt of religious doctrine and diminished rationality with stronger belief in religious doctrine.

Perhaps an even bigger problem here is that Hecht’s so-called “Scale of Doubt” fails to recognize that a negative answer to each of her questions counts as belief in what she calls rational materialism. In short, to answer “no” to particular beliefs entails a yes to other beliefs. For example, consider this entry on the Scale of Doubt: “Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?” If one answers “no” here, then one is in effect saying yes to scientism by affirming that the world is completely knowable by science. But why doesn’t doubt of scientism count in placing one higher on the Scale of Doubt, particularly when the thesis is highly contentious among philosophers?

Let’s put it another way. By simply rewriting Hecht’s questions, we could refashion the Scale of Doubt so that doubt counts when it is directed at materialist rather than theistic or religious claims. In that way, the atheist materialist would suddenly be labelled the credulous believer in such things as scientism while the theist would be considered the rational doubter because she doubts those same claims.

To be sure, neither one of these alternative scales is a fair measure of doubt, still less of rationality. And I would think that the ultimate goal of skepticism and doubt presumably is the pursuit of rationality. Skepticism and doubt are not ends in themselves. They are only of value insofar as they are part of what it means to believe in accord with reason. With that in mind, we need to appreciate that the most doubtful person is most certainly not the most rational person. To illustrate, picture the person who seeks to be maximally skeptical and so they doubt the testimony of every person they meet, they doubt the reliability of their memory, they doubt their sense perception, and their reasoning faculties. From there they could go on to doubt the existence of the external world, other minds and, if they were really keen, even their own existence. But there comes a point in all this doubting when you shift from being a paragon of rationality to being a person in need of professional counselling. Unremitting doubt of all things is not the path to rationality.

The lesson, as has oft been observed, is that while there is a place to believe our doubts and doubt our beliefs, reason also calls us to believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts. You see, rationality is not one-sidedly aligned with doubt. Rather it seeks the proper balance between the two. Philosopher Anthony Kenny describes reason well by understanding it in the terms of the Aristotelian concept of virtue as the balance between two vices: “The rational human being is the person who possesses the virtue that is in contrast with each of the opposing vices of credulity and skepticism.”

Even if belief is a critical part of reason, the public perception remains that skepticism (and doubt) are closely linked to rationality and, even more importantly, to atheism. At a cultural level, this perception might seem to be vindicated by the fact that pro-skeptic organizations like the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry; (CSI; formerly CSICOP: Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) and the Skeptics Society seem to have a close alliance with the atheistic community.

Since Paul Kurtz cofounded CSICOP in 1976 the organization has cultivated a well-earned reputation as a bastion of critical thinking. Key to CSI’s current mandate is to investigate and debunk various tendentious claims including those of faith healers and so-called prayer experiments which seek to validate the value of petitionary prayer. These endeavors have helped perpetuate the perception among many that skepticism is inimical to theistic belief.

As for the Skeptics Society and its flagship publication Skeptic magazine, these too are commonly associated not simply with skepticism but with outright atheism. Perhaps this isn’t surprising given that Richard Dawkins, widely reputed as the leading atheist in the world, is on the editorial board of Skeptic. And Dawkins himself certainly does see a tight connection between rationality and atheism. In addition, Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic, has been an outspoken defender of atheism.

The way that skepticism seamlessly unites with atheism is evident in my atheist friend (and coauthor) Justin Schieber, who is described online as focusing on “promoting critical thought, more specifically, a friendly yet firm skepticism towards religious claims.” Note how Schieber links skepticism with an attitude toward explicitly religious claims, a casting of skepticism as specially directed toward religiously claims. This seems to echo Hecht’s Scale of Doubt.

While groups like CSI and the Skeptic Society might appear to bind atheism to skepticism, this association does not hold up to scrutiny. Where CSI is concerned, we can note the case of Martin Gardner. A mathematician, philosopher, and magician, Gardner committed much of his life to promoting the values of skepticism and critical thinking while deftly exposing instances of pseudoscience in the wider culture. He first rose to prominence in 1957 with the publication of the phenomenally popular book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Later, in 1976 Gardner joined Paul Kurtz as one of the founders of CSICOP.

While he was among the preeminent skeptic debunkers, Gardner also remained a theist throughout his life. To be sure, he rejected all religious traditions, so in that sense, his skepticism was well on display. Nonetheless, he maintained a belief in a supreme divine intelligence that governed the universe. Gardner described his views at some length in his book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. And he readily acknowledged that some skeptics found his theism to be an idiosyncratic fit with his skepticism. He writes: “My atheist and agnostic friends never cease to be amazed and dismayed over how I manage to be such a thoroughgoing skeptic of the paranormal and still retain a belief in God. It’s as if they think that anyone who doubts Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons with his mind must also doubt the existence of God!” Gardner’s point is well taken. A person can be a wise skeptic of the spoon-bending showman who makes a fortune off his alleged telekinetic powers and at the same time one can find reason to believe in a necessary divine agent who created and sustains the universe. (Or, to put it another way, one might doubt both the magician who purports to bend spoons with his mind and the atheist who insists that the universe came to exist uncaused.)

Once we reject Hecht’s equation of skepticism and doubt with acceptance of one particular set of beliefs (e.g. those of the atheistic materialist) we are reminded that just as one skeptic can accept scientism (for better or for worse) so another skeptic like Gardner is free to accept theism. If I may take the liberty of reworking an oft-repeated quote from Stephen Roberts, the theist may reply to the skeptic, “I contend that we are both skeptics, I just believe in one more god than you do.”

Gardner may provide a visible reminder that CSI is not necessarily atheistic, but what about the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine? After all, as we saw, Richard Dawkins is on the board of Skeptic and he is certainly no friend of theism. And don’t forget Michael Shermer who has been a frequent critic of God and religion.

However, here too a closer look reveals the lines of demarcation are not quite as stark as many believe. Back in 1994 conservative talk radio host Laura Schlesinger was invited to join the board of Skeptic. The invitation was given before Dr. Laura converted to conservative (and later Orthodox) Judaism. However, the critical point to note is that her later religious conversion had no negative impact on her ability to serve on the board of Skeptic. But this is not to say that everyone was comfortable with the role of a theist on the board. In his book How We Believe Michael Shermer recalls how he received expressions of concern from supporters of the Skeptics Society about Schlesinger’s role with the magazine. One writer expressed concern based on the fact that Schlesinger regularly appealed to the Bible as an authority on her radio show: “I didn’t know that skeptics relied on authority to settle disagreements over morality.” Nor was that the only objection to Schlesinger. Shermer notes that he received several more letters, faxes and emails in 1996 and 1997 protesting Schlesinger’s continued membership on the board.

However, in a triumph of true intellectual freedom, Shermer steadfastly defended Schlesinger’s role on the board. As he put it,

We explained that membership or involvement in any capacity with the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine is not exclusionary. We could not care less what anyone’s religious beliefs are. In fact, at least two of our more prominent supporters—the comedian and songwriter Steve Allen and the mathematician and essayist Martin Gardner—are believers in God. Other members of the board may believe in God as well. I do not know. I have never asked.

Shermer goes on to insist that the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine have no objection per se either to theism or to religious commitment. Rather, their concern arises only when individuals or groups make claims that are open to rational investigation whether the topic involves Uri Geller’s spoon-bending, climate change deniers, or a religious claim involving the Shroud of Turin, faith healing, or the young earth creationist’s reconstruction of earth history. As Shermer puts it, “If, in the process of learning how to think scientifically and critically, someone comes to the conclusion that there is no God, so be it—but it is not our goal to convert believers into nonbelievers.”

Hecht, Doubt: A History (New York: HarperOne, 2003), ix.

Hecht, Doubt: A History, xi.

Hecht, Doubt: A History, x.

For a good introductory critique of scientism see Philip Kitcher, “The Trouble with Scientism,” New Republic (May 3, 2012), https://newrepublic.com/article/103086/scientism-humanities-knowledge-theory-everything-arts-science (Accessed online July 5, 2016).

Descartes famously thought he established at least that he exists. But his critics insisted that all Descartes really established is that “There are thoughts.” See Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins, The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy, 9th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2014), 199.

Anthony Kenny, What Is Faith? Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 6.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptic_(U.S._magazine) (Accessed June 24, 2016).

Schieber and I authored the book An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything (Prometheus, 2016).

See http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/#ixzz4CW2ZuZBC  (Accessed on July 2, 2016).

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York: Dover Publications, 1957).

The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (New York: W. Morrow, 1983). See also his 2008 interview with Alexander Carpenter, “Martin Gardner on Philosophical Theism, Adventists and Price,” Spectrum (October 17, 2008) http://spectrummagazine.org/node/1091 (Accessed on June 27, 2016).

Gardner, “Confessions of a Skeptic,” in Bryan Farha, ed. Pseudoscience and Deception: The Smoke and Mirrors of Paranormal Claims (Lanham, MY: University Press of America, 2014), 122.

Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), xiii.

Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, xiii.

Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, xiv. Dr. Laura did choose to leave the board later based on her concern that an edition of Skeptic was unfairly targeting belief in God. But from Shermer’s perspective, the magazine was simply subjecting theistic belief to the same critical eye that they subject every other belief. There certainly was no intent of aligning skepticism with atheism.

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Friendly Dialogue with Atheists: A Podcast Interview

This morning, I joined John Morehead of the Multifaith Matters Podcast in a conversation on effective apologetics and meaningful conversation. Check it out here.

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Top-Flight Philosophy of Religion For Free!

Christmas comes early this year!

You can now download for FREE the latest mini-monograph in the Cambridge Elements series, world-renowned philosopher of religion John Schellenberg’s Monotheism and the Rise of Science.

The book is available until December 7th! Download it here.

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Did I experience demonic oppression? A critical reflection

In this video, I recount an alleged case of demonic oppression that I experienced in June 1993. I originally recount this case in my 2011 article “Awake in Japan.”

The post Did I experience demonic oppression? A critical reflection appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Why a meaningful life is not the same thing as a life that does (or does not) go on forever

Christians sometimes argue that life is only meaningful if it goes on forever. Atheists sometimes argue that life is only meaningful if it doesn’t go on forever.

They’re both wrong.

The post Why a meaningful life is not the same thing as a life that does (or does not) go on forever appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Christians vs. Skeptics: The Ultimate Charitable Competition

Last year, I sponsored a fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation that pitted skeptics against Christians. The U.S. fundraiser raised $660 (US funds) while the Canadian-based fundraiser raised $1250 (Canadian funds). I plan to launch another fundraiser this year on Giving Tuesday (December 1). However, my goal this year is to double both totals. And to that end, I’m putting my money where my mouth is: last year, I donated $500 to the Canadian total but this year I will up that to $1000.

As part of the promotion, today I interviewed Rob Mather, the founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation. 100% of donations go to mosquito nets that save lives. It’s a phenomenal charitable organization and after you watch our interview (which is going online on Giving Tuesday) I think you’ll agree.

So please, consider setting aside some moola for this humble fundraiser so that you may give in the name of Christianity, humanist skepticism, or simply kindness. Together, we can make the world a better place, one net at a time! Remember, it all starts December 1st and it runs until Christmas Eve!

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Finding the Devil in Rock and Roll … Backwards

The single most infamous song of the backward masking craze of the 1980s was
surely Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” A message from the devil or a trick of
the imagination? I’ll say the latter. But when we were kids, playing “Stairway to
Heaven” backward on the record player was still a memorable way to spend an
afternoon. For further discussion see What’s So Confusing About Grace? chapter 8,
“The Sixth Spiritual Law and Playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backward.”

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On this sad little quip: “When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” —Stephen F Roberts

Some years after first penning those words, Roberts provided this modest retrospective:

“Yep, that’s me! I am the author of the above quote which has become a bit of a popular statement throughout the net (and some in the real world too).”

..I first used The Quote as a tag line for postings on the newsgroups alt.atheism and talk.atheism at some point before October 1995. I don’t remember exactly when I started using it, and unfortunately lost my mailer that would have contained the archive. The earliest records that DejaNews.com have is back to 1995, and by October 1995 it apeared ‘widespread’ in taglines, so I must have originated it sometime before then. Most likely early 95 or late 94.

…The Quote is an original quote that came from an online debate I was having with religious people in the newsgroups. I used the a similar comparison in a debate when my opponent wondered why I ignored the evidence for god, and in return, I wondered why my debate opponent chose to ignore the evidence for Shiva, or Zeus, or any of the other possible gods.

…I then slightly refined and shortened it the next day to the ‘modern’ form it is now to use in a tagline. Within days, The Quote was in use by others in their taglines (I added my name as an attribute a few weeks later when people asked me if it was my original quote).

…About a month later, I made another variation of the quote that also appears sometimes: “We are all atheists, some of us just believe in fewer gods than others”… but it never quite got the popularity of the original

[…]

I just had the luck to put together the phrase right at the dawn of the modern Internet age.

My Trent Horn Interview

Superfluous pics from my visit to the Catholic Answers studio back in 2019.

Cool Beans! I’m honored to be featured on Trent Horn’s latest podcast as one of his four Protestant role models.

You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/my...

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If the Bible includes immoral laws, how can it be inspired?

My new book Conversations with My Inner Atheist features an extended conversation ranging over 25 chapters with my inner voice of questioning and doubt, My Inner Atheist (Mia). I have included chapter 6 below: “If the Bible includes immoral laws, how can it be inspired?” If you enjoy the chapter, consider buying the book.

Mia: Okay, let’s turn back to the Bible for a moment.

Randal: I had a feeling we weren’t done with that topic.

Mia: Done? We’re just getting started. So I already pointed out that the Bible is surprisingly ambiguous in laying out the details of salvation. The problem I now want to consider is that the authors of Scripture say a lot of other things which are morally problematic and thus they count against the Bible being the revelation of any perfect God of the Philosophers. Maybe the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is behind this book. But if he is, he ends up looking more like a terrifying Middle Eastern warlord rather than the vision of Anselm’s perfect idealization.

Randal: Hey, easy on the Richard Dawkins-styled rhetoric.

Mia: Rhetoric? Have you read the Bible? It’s full of immoral teaching.

Randal: I’ll stop you right there. Be careful about conflating that which is recorded in the Bible with that which is taught in the Bible. The Bible includes lots of material that is simply recorded but not commended.

Mia: Fine, let me clarify. The Bible includes many passages in which the human authors—God’s people—endorse behaviors or actions that are evil. And these are allegedly a reflection of the command and wisdom of God. Just consider God’s Law in the Torah.

Randal: Don’t be too quick to dismiss the Torah. That ancient code makes impressive advances beyond other legal codes of the day. For example, in the Law of Hammurabi, if a man hits a pregnant woman and she loses the fetus, he needs to pay a fine, but if she dies, then his daughter (assuming he has one) is killed in retaliation.

Mia: Barbaric!

Randal: Yes, it is. The Torah addresses the same topic in Exodus 21:22-23. But in this case, the punishment is importantly different. Once again, the man must pay a fine if the woman loses the fetus, but if she dies, the text directs a payment of “life for life” (v. 23). In other words, the guilty party must accept the penalty as the perpetrator of the act. Punishment is not inflicted on an innocent third party.

Mia: That may be less bad, but that hardly makes it good. Like today, if some guy hits a woman and she falls on her stomach and miscarries, would you agree with executing the man in retaliation?

Randal: No, I’m not saying that. I was just pointing out that you should grant that the Torah constitutes a notable improvement in many ways over the other legal codes of the time.

Mia: Oh, I’m willing to grant that all day long. No problem there at all.

Randal: Wait, are you being sarcastic?

Mia: No, actually I’m being one hundred percent genuine. I truly have no problem recognizing that the Torah represents an incremental moral improvement over other legal codes of the day. That’s precisely what we would expect from the long history of humanity: natural, incremental moral improvements.

But you, you’re conceding that today we have moved beyond the moral improvement of the Torah since you wouldn’t sanction killing a man in those circumstances. Put it this way: if there are two societies today which are identical except that in society 1 the man is executed in that circumstance while in society 2 he serves a sentence in prison, you would think society 2 is more just, all other things being equal, than society 1, right?

Randal: Yes, I agree with that.

Mia: Good, so to put it another way, the Torah may be less brutish than the Law of Hammurabi but that doesn’t mean it isn’t brutish.

Randal: “Brutish” is a strong word.

Mia: Don’t worry, I’ll be happy to expand on that. But first, I want to make sure that you agree on the fact that the authors of the Hebrew Bible do not appear to view the Torah in this very modest developmental way that you’re proposing. The Torah isn’t merely seen to be an advance on other ancient near eastern legal codes. Rather, biblical authors view it as a wonderful and gloriously wise revelation to order one’s life and govern civil society.

Perhaps the fullest endorsement of the beauty and wisdom of the Law comes in Psalm 119 as the Psalmist exults in God’s Law:

4 You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed.

5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!

6 Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands.

7 I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws.

8 I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me.

In verse after verse, the Psalmist captures the beauty of Torah culminating in the words of verse 160: “All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.”

Again, the Psalmist does not view the Torah merely as an incremental improvement in governance over the Law of Hammurabi. No, he views it as a glorious thing, a maximally wise way to order one’s life. But we’ve already agreed that this isn’t correct since the killing of a man for the inadvertent death of a fetus-in-utero is not justified and a civil society that didn’t have that brutish penalty would, all other things being equal, be more humane and just than one that did.

But that’s just the beginning: there are many other laws which pose an even sharper affront to our moral sensibilities.

Randal: Such as?

Mia: Let’s start with the so-called Ordeal of the Bitter Waters.

Randal: Yikes, that sounds like a chapter from a fantasy novel.

Mia: Uh yeah, okay, this is probably not the time to make a joke. This is serious stuff. In Numbers 5:11-31 the Torah outlines what should happen to a woman who is suspected of adultery. The enraged hubby would drag her before the priest and she would be required to drink a bitter potion. Then, if her stomach swelled afterward she would be judged guilty of adultery.

I mean, I have enough problems with the notion of a jealous husband hiring a private investigator based on a hunch. Still, at least that guy might have a hope of getting some actual evidence. But who is to say why this poor woman’s stomach might end up swelling? To subject her to this kind of trauma based potentially on nothing more than a possessive husband’s gut feeling? And now her whole life might depend on how her body reacts to a particular concoction? Unconscionable!

Randal: Look, I’m not going to pretend that’s anything other than awkward.

Mia: If you were to learn that Saudi Arabia today has a law like that on the books, would you merely call it awkward? Or would you say it is an affront to basic human rights and that it should be eradicated?

Randal: The latter, I suppose.

Mia: You ‘suppose’? What a disappointingly understated response. Well, the next law may be even worse. In Deuteronomy 25:11-12 we read what should be done to a woman when she grabs a man’s genitals while he is fighting her husband. Guess what? Her hand should be amputated, just lopped right off. I don’t need to tell you that this was in a day before the mercy of general anesthesia.

Again, how would you react if you read that a judge in Saudi Arabia today decreed the amputation of a wife’s hand for a similar action? Horrible, right?

Randal: Yes, I agree, I would respond viscerally in both cases. And it’s definitely worse than just awkward.

Mia: I’m glad to hear that. But then you’re already disagreeing sharply with the Psalmist who believes this law manifests God’s glorious wisdom for regulating the self and civil society today. You don’t think that applies today, clearly. But then what about ancient Israel? Did they get it wrong?

Randal: Well, I . . .

Mia: Actually, hold that thought. I want to pile on one more case and this one is probably the worst of all. Imagine for the moment that you read the following story in the news:

(Kabul, Afghanistan) Yesterday, reports surfaced of a public stoning in the city of Saidu Sharif in the Swat Valley of eastern Afghanistan. Early reports identify two parents as presenting their thirteen-year-old son to public authorities for being “stubborn and rebellious”. Town elders gathered together and stoned the boy until he was dead. The Al Qaeda held district of Swat has become notorious in recent months due to its enforcement of a strict Sharia law. (Associated Press)

I’m guessing that you would be shocked and morally indignant at this report. And I bet you’d denounce it as a moral atrocity, amirite?

Randal: I’m not going to sugarcoat it: that sounds abominable. I’d be horrified, disgusted . . .

Mia: And yet, you have a passage just like that in Deuteronomy 21:18-21, a passage in which parents are directed to take an insub- ordinate child to the elders to be stoned to death. This must surely be one of the most shocking passages of all in the Torah. But to really see how shocking it is, you need to listen to a Christian biblical scholar defending it. Just consider how Eugene Merrill addresses this passage. Merrill describes the steps under which the execu- tion would take place with a disturbing matter-of-factness while making clear that according to verse 19, the child was definitely not yet an adult. Against that backdrop, Merrill then explains why it would be necessary to pelt this insubordinate youth to death with rocks. He writes:

“The severity of the punishment appears to outweigh the crime, but we must recognize that parental sovereignty was at stake. Were insubordination of children toward their parents to have been tolerated, there would have been but a short step toward the insubordination of all of the Lord’s servant people to him, the King of kings.”

Did you catch that? Parental sovereignty is apparently at stake: that’s why Merrill believes it was necessary to pelt the child to death with rocks. He’s defending it as an honor killing.

Randal: Ouch, I agree that’s an ugly justification all right. I remember reading about a contemporary honor killing in Canada a few years ago. A Muslim father in Toronto named Muhammad Parvez and his son together strangled his sixteen-year-old daughter to death because she refused to wear the hijab and conform to other rules in their conservative Muslim household. Needless to say, I felt terrible for the poor daughter who was victim to the violence and cruelty of her father and his evil cultural assumptions.

Mia: Careful, it sounds like you might be saying there is a wicked ideology in the Bible. That’s the surest path to theological exile in the Christian community.

Randal: I’ve thought a lot about this. I think any Christian who wrestles with these texts and who allows the compassion and mercy of their God-given moral intuitions to speak back to them will feel that they are out at sea, being tossed by waves in a churning storm. As they move deeper into the storm, the swells grow larger and they might begin to wonder if they’ll ever make it to shore. That has often been my experience when I have carefully considered some of the violence of the Torah.

And so, let me now suggest that the way to get guided back to shore starts with finding that fixed point of light—the lighthouse, as it were—that will bring us in. Find the lighthouse and keep your eyes on it and you can find your way through the storm.

Mia: Wow, that’s very dramatic. And the lighthouse is . . . ?

Randal: Jesus, of course!

Mia: Ah, I should’ve guessed.

Randal: I know it might sound like a cliché, but I’m deathly serious. Every Christian should recognize that Jesus is the interpretive key for the Bible. The entire Bible is about him and for him and to him, so we should always read the entire Bible in light of him.

Mia: Don’t be offended, but it sounds like you’re just piling up bumper-sticker maxims. How does this work out in these specific cases?

Randal: Well, first off, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law (Matthew 5:17-20). If you want to know the true purpose of the Law, you must read it through Jesus.

To illustrate what I mean, bear with me while I give an illustration. Picture a husband and wife who live happily in a small one-bedroom suite. This couple loves living in the city: they regularly go to parties and clubs, they leave on a moment’s notice and lock up the apartment to go on a vacation to the tropics; they work long but satisfying hours at their startup business; they are happy and fulfilled.

Then suddenly they give up their apartment and the life they enjoyed in the city and move to the suburbs where they buy a new home with a fenced yard near a school. They paint one bedroom with a Sesame Street motif and put in a crib, the husband builds a playset in the backyard, and they buy lots of toys and fill a closet with baby clothes.

Now, what do you suppose explains all those perplexing changes?

Mia: Lemme guess: could it be that the wife is . . . pregnant?

Randal: You got it! If we only considered their actions relative to their satisfying life in the city, all those changes would appear perplexing. But of course, they are all explained given the expectation of a pregnancy: that future child provides a perspective to make sense of all their otherwise perplexing actions.

I’m not suggesting the problem with the Bible can be interpreted just that neatly, but I am claiming that the basic logic is quite similar: we need to read the perplexing things that come before in light of Jesus who comes after. And so, when we have questions about Torah, we should look to Jesus as its fulfillment.

Mia: Fine, but how does Jesus explain all that?

Randal: Jesus said he came not to destroy the Law and Prophets but to fulfill them, in other words, to show their true meaning, end, and purpose. And clearly, that purpose wasn’t to establish the one perfect way to govern society. Jesus was actually quite explicit about this when he noted in Matthew 19:3-9 that the Mosaic law on divorce was a concession to where the people were at rather than an expression of God’s perfect will for all time. This opens up the space for recognizing accommodation in the Torah to the imperfect circumstances of human history.

Mia: Accommodation? You mean something like that idea of incremental moral improvement?

Randal: Yes. And so, insofar as the Psalmist didn’t recognize the Law as an accommodation, insofar as he believed it was the maximally perfect final way to regulate oneself and civil society, to that degree he was wrong.

Mia: Wow, so the Psalmist made mistakes?

Randal: He didn’t have the full picture. That only came with Jesus. I don’t think that’s revolutionary. God is inerrant in his actions in the writing of scripture. But that doesn’t mean that the human author of Scripture is thereby inerrant in all his perspectives. You cited the lofty view of the Law in Psalm 119. I don’t think that the Psalmist had the accommodationist picture that Jesus seems to take when he addresses divorce. But that doesn’t negate the voice of the Psalmist. Rather, it should remind us that only God sees the whole picture. The final authority in all Scripture resides with God’s voice in the text as it is interpreted through Jesus.

Psalm 119 is only the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that the Psalmist often says things that the Christian should disagree with. For example, in Psalm 37:13 he says that God laughs at the destruction of the wicked and their future judgment. And in Psalm 69:28 the Psalmist pleads that the names of his enemies would be removed from the Book of Life. The Psalmist says many other things about his enemies that are equally awful and inconsistent with what a Christian believes about God and proper holiness.

So why do we think differently from the Psalmist? Because Jesus explicitly said in Matthew 5:43-44 that while it has been said you should hate your enemy, he calls us to love our enemies. And where the Law called for a woman to be stoned for adultery, Jesus called for mercy (John 8:1-11).

The very heart of the Law, so Jesus said, is to love God and neighbor. That’s what it is to be like Jesus. And as I already pointed out, the purpose of Scripture, as Paul says in I Timothy 3:14-17, is to make us more like Jesus. So what does that look like? Admittedly, it isn’t always clear, but St. Augustine offered an excellent guiding principle when he suggested that we always ought to read the Bible so as to increase love of God and neighbor. Thus, if a reading of Scripture leads us away from that love, we need to reconsider that reading. I think that’s great advice.

So while I don’t have an explanation for everything, I do think there is clearly evidence of accommodation in the text, there is evidence of human weakness and fallibility—as in the Psalmist’s angry outbursts—and we ought to read all of it in light of the person and life of Jesus who showed us the true heart of God the Father.

When people read the Torah as perfect in the unqualified sense suggested by Psalm 119 rather than as an incremental improvement indicative of divine accommodation but ultimately pointing toward Jesus as its fulfillment, I believe they misread it. And a good sign that they are misreading is that their way of reading does not increase love of God and neighbor. Their reading often forces them to justify imperfect legal dictates that, if consistently followed, could unfairly terrorize or inflict excessive violence on a wife, or perpetuate the most torturous death of a child. Their reading forces them into a cognitive dissonance with their basic moral intuitions as they recoil in disgust at honor killings or hand amputations carried out in other contexts.

Most people today recognize that those actions are wrong,  so when Christians find themselves defending the trial of bitter waters, the amputation of hands, or the stoning of a child, I think they are thereby attempting to cauterize their moral compassion and sense of justice for the sake of their reading of the text. And that, I believe, is a mistake.

Mia: But isn’t this all just a bit too neat and tidy? How do you defend yourself against the charge that you’re just reading the Bible in light of your modern cultural assumptions?

Randal: First off, I don’t think this is “neat and tidy” at all. It’s messy. We have to read carefully and judiciously in light of God as revealed in Jesus, looking for moral development in the text, guided by readings that increase rather than decrease love of God and neighbor.

What is more, I’d say that objection can be turned right back onto the objector. We all read the Bible in light of our own beliefs. So-called modern cultural assumptions—such as the belief in the injustice and cruelty of hand amputation and stoning—are not thereby automatically more suspect than well-entrenched assumptions about the moral rightness of such actions.

Let me put it this way: the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century was up against centuries of Christians reading the Bible as pro-slavery and yet we all know which side won that debate. I think it is reasonable to think Christians who categorically reject practices like honor killing and hand amputation are in a moral position analogous to the abolitionists.

One more thing: that hypothetical objector is just mistaken to think that these issues only became a matter of moral concern in the modern era. We can see Christians throughout history wrestling with the way to interpret biblical violence, to recognize development in the text, and with how to read the Hebrew Scriptures in light of the coming of Jesus.

The bottom line is this: Christians can disagree over how to interpret the Torah and the ethics and wisdom of its various laws. But no Christian should find herself compelled to sacrifice her conscience or to go against the way she believes God is revealed in Jesus for a particular reading of those passages. As Martin Luther famously said when he took his stand at the Council of Worms, “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.”

God has given us a conscience, and reading Scripture in light of Christ, ever guided in our pursuit of greater love of God and neighbor, we should not be afraid to use it.

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