What Is Wrong with the Word of God?

What is it that disturbs many of us when we hear politicians call for laws based on the Bible? We fear a neo-Puritan theocracy which would stifle dissent and persecute dissenters. The Bill of Rights is effectively scripture for most of us and we can see the handwriting on the wall (or rather the erasure of it!) if Bible zealots took power.

A quick clarification: there are many in government who revere the Bible as the inspired Word of God and yet realize they serve all the people, not just co-religionists. Surgeon General C. Everett Coop is a shining example, and his lack of partiality got him in considerable trouble with fellow evangelical Protestants when he refused to ignore the plight of Gay Americans as some wanted him to do. I know better than to allege that all who believe in the authority, even the inerrancy, of the Bible would feel obliged to force it on everyone else. But there certainly are some. I think it is not much of a caricature to call "Christian Theonomy" or "Christian Reconstructionist" advocates a kind of Christian Taliban. Is it likely they might one day rise to power? The only way I can see it happening is via a military coup, given the presence of many Christian officers who openly proselytize among their vulnerable troops. Only recently have their extensive evangelism efforts come to public notice. But even such a government seizure could never last. Everybody else would be out on the street, daring the National Guard to shoot them, which they would never do, and the plotters would be left holding the biblical bag.

So there are scary partisans for making scripture normative for the rest of us, though not much chance of it ever happening. But what exactly are we afraid of in such a scenario, often raised like a spectre by Secular Humanist fundraisers? I think there is a significant confusion here, though in the end I admit it may not matter much. My impression is that those who fear a Christian theocracy reason (correctly) that an ethos derived simply from (ostensible) divine revelation is going to be based on arbitrary assertions from some weirdo in a trance. "Thou shalt henceforth walk only on thy hands!" "Thou shalt marry thy goldfish!" But that is not usually the problem. There have been rare examples of this kind, but usually they are what Albert Schweitzer called "interim ethics" designed for an emergency, short-lived situation until the imminent End of the world as we know it. The whole point is that, for Chicken Little, it is no longer business as usual, and so what "works" in the public, long-term society is no longer relevant. Certain emergency measures (quitting your job, fasting, celibacy—or license!–, giving away possessions, the Ghost Dance) are required, perhaps as tokens of lay-it-on-the-line, put-your-money-where-your mouth-is faith, either to demonstrate your worthiness to survive the Final Judgment or even to bring it about. Or a prophet (e.g., Jacob Frank) may reveal that the New Era has commenced, but as yet in secret, in the form of a mustard seed, waiting for the full, unmistakable fulfillment which every eye shall see. In the meantime, new "eschatological" behavior (usually licentious) is allowed and encouraged (holy orgies, etc.), but in secret, lest the unenlightened worldlings find out and compound their sins by martyring their superiors whose ways they fail to understand. Often these sects' belief that they sit on the cusp of the future leads to their disbanding, persecution, or collective suicide (Jonestown, Waco, Heaven's Gate). Their behavior is a repudiation of our ordinary world, and the universe is not big enough for both. So if the outward, public world will not oblige them and go away, the sect will go away. This world is no longer their home, so, one way or another, something's got to give. What I'm saying is that "revealed" commandments that would alienate us from the common life of our species have no lasting value. No one who espouses them (or secretly practices them) is likely to get or to keep power in America.

But that is not usually the problem with ostensible revelations that fanatics would like to impose. Oh the laws they promote are outrageous enough: stoning evangelists for nonbiblical religions, killing homosexuals, executing kids who curse at their parents, reinstating slavery, etc. It's just that these are not the rantings of manic oracles who ought to be in liturgical straightjackets. No, the problem is that scriptures merely preserve the legislation of communities of the distant past, societies in which these statutes once seemed quite reasonable. And the world has changed so much, very many of these archaic laws simply do not fit anymore. I don't mean to be a total relativist, implying that it used to be fine and dandy to stone adulterers and transvestites to death, or spirit mediums with their customers. It remains monstrous in any case to think of enforcing such arrangements in our day.

It does appear that certain distinctly ritual laws (Martin Noth called them "apodictic laws" in the Old Testament, Ernst Käsemann "sentences of holy law" and Bultmann "law words" in the New) were the direct product of priests and prophets "giving torah (instruction)." This had to do with acceptable sacrifices and prohibitions of ritually unclean food, ceremonially "impure" sex acts, etc., not morality. These varied from culture to culture yesterday as they do today, since all cultures have analogous mores, often so taken for granted that we do not even notice them. Not surprisingly, civil and criminal laws, even ethics, resemble one another quite closely the world over, despite infinite differences in detail and definition. This is no mystery. They reflect the common human nature of all mankind. We are social animals, and there are certain actions that cannot be allowed if we are to have a livable society. Certain ground rules must be laid down and reinforced by education and peer pressure. We try to program into children a super-ego, the disembodied voices of neighbors and parents, and if it works, we call it conscience. And to give them a good scare, we propagate the fiction that God or gods prescribed all these laws (plus customs, manners, etc.) and will punish violators even if no other human being catches them in the act.

Accordingly, every scriptural collection of laws merely reflects the standards of the surrounding environment. The Pentateuch seems heavily based on Assyrian law. The Koran encapsulates seventh-century Arab legal traditions, just as the Taliban enshrines local tribal law. None of it looks like it is even supposed to be "revelation" in the usual theological sense: information human beings couldn't have guessed. The "divine inspiration" business is an afterthought, a sanction. But once it is added on, naturally, it becomes very difficult to amend the laws thus made into an idol. And indeed, that might be said to be the whole point.

But eventually some updates need to be made. In the case of Jewish law, the major task has always been to apply the text to new situations not mentioned in the scripture. But back in ancient Israel/Judah, they did not hesitate to change and update the Torah. Just compare Deuteronomy ("Second Law") with the earlier codes contained in Exodus, and the still later provisions of the Priestly Code with those of Deuteronomy. All were attributed to Moses, and that legal fiction seemed to do the trick.

If a group rejects the old code completely, it is usually to make way for something new and different, and a new religion results—on purpose. When the Buddha rejected the Hindu scriptures, it meant he had started a new faith. Even so, when Mahavira rejected them, he hung out the shingle of Jainism. And when Marcion of Sinope cut loose the Old Testament, he was declaring Christianity a wholly new faith.

This total separation is the mirror image of the anguish of the members of a faith whose hierarchy has ordered major changes in the tradition without officially starting over. After the Second Vatican Council, many traditionalist Roman Catholics stumbled at the supposed fact that the old ways had been divinely decreed—but had now been set aside by divine leading! How could it have once been a terrible sin to eat beef on Friday but not anymore! Was Aunt Mimi sentenced to Purgatory for doing it but you would not be today? Fundamentalist evangelist Lehman Strauss, invited to Sunday dinner where pork was served, when asked to say the blessing over the food, prayed, "O Lord, if you can bless under grace what you cursed under Law, then bless this meal!"

Thus the business of updating is tricky and must be subtly done. The Koran contains the warning that "If Allah abrogates a verse or causes it to be forgotten, he is able to replace it with another like it or even better." The redactional changes Matthew made to Mark's gospel must be seen this way, too. Matthew (19:9) wasn't trying to give a more "accurate" account than Mark (10:10-12) did of what Jesus said about divorce, adding a clause Mark must have forgotten; rather, he was amending the sacred charter of his Christian community, trying to deal more leniently with sexual impropriety and divorce. But you see what difficulties it created for theologians: a contradiction in scripture! And here come the ridiculous harmonizations.

In modern secular societies like ours, the laws are regarded as a man-made social contract. But we realize that laws which can change as the wind blows, or at the whim of a dictator, are not real laws at all (since the humans who cook them up and then disobey them at will are superior to them, not subordinate to them). Thus we regard our Constitution as if it were infallible scripture, not to be set aside with impunity or for anyone's convenience. We even have the same sort of hermeneutical debates over things like "authorial intent" and the "intent of the Founders" that theologians have in the interpretation of the Bible. But we have the advantage of knowing that mere humans wrote the thing and that it may need updating. But it is not subject to just anyone's whims to update and alter. The Constitution has become reified, that is, possessing its own gravity and substance, preceding the existence of any American citizens. It was here before we were. It is a human creation, but not our creation, and this gives it a gravitas equivalent to a divinely inspired scripture but without the paralyzing superstition that plagues theocrats whose chapter-and-verse adherence to their superannuated texts is eerily like the cultists of whom one hears every so often who stand vigil around the stinking corpse of their leader, expecting him to rise from the dead. Get real: he's gone. History has devoured him. History has devoured the Koran, the Sharia'h, the Priestly Code, and the Code of Hammurabi. Once the imprimatur of divine origin lent authority to the law codes; now it reduces them to grotesque preserved corpses like Lenin's on display for pious Communists to venerate in the Kremlin.

So we can amend our laws, free of the pretense that they were written in stone by Jehovah's fingernail. There is nothing to explain, no need to harmonize. But it is purposely hard to update them, because we want the law to continue to exist as something greater than any government or individual. Thus we have an elaborate process of state ratification. When we are done, it still will not seem fly-by-night. We will still stand before it with awe and freely yielded obedience, like the ancient Israelites agreeing with Moses to make the Book of the Covenant their own. But without illusions.

By all means, let us glean what wisdom we may from the pages of ancient scriptures, one and all. But we must not allow them to chain us to the past, which is, in religion and theocracy, only a futile pretense that the God who prescribed them still lives, that he has not long since died of extreme old age.

So says Zarathustra.