Is there a liberal Christian theism? I
It has been suggested that there may be problem at the heart of the new atheist project. If so, then it needs to be addressed. We can put the problem in this way. Now, please note, I do not say that it is a problem, but that it may be one. I want to look more closely at it, in order to say whether, first, it is a problem, and then, second, if it is, whether it has been adequately dealt with. There are a number of atheists who believe that this is a problem, and that those who dismiss it are being superficial and unnecessarily dismissive of religion. While atheism is not just a negative dismissal of theism, it is at least that in part. However, if its status as a rational dismissal of theism is to stand, it must respond to theism’s efforts to present itself as rational and able to take on board the kinds of criticism that are often made of the theistic world-view. Quite aside from the question of the existence of God, which is not going to be settled to anyone’s satisfaction within the lives of anyone living today or tomorrow, there are other questions as to the acceptability of faith, and those who dismiss religious faith must have an answer, in addition to scepticism about the existence of God, why more liberal approaches to religious belief are unacceptable to nonbelievers who persist in opposing even liberal religion, and have shown themselves reluctant to join even with the exponents of liberal religion in attempting to bring about justice and peace in our societies and in the world.
Aside from arguments pertaining to the existence of a god or gods, amongst the strongest arguments against theism are those pertaining to the use of scriptures by most theistic religions, that is, the belief in and use of texts considered to be holy and revelational of the nature and purposes of the god or gods believed in by the religion concerned. This is also the area in which liberal Christianity has made the most effort to be contemporary and open to change, so it is an important test area for the question of whether there is a genuinely liberal Christian theism. We are all familiar with the fairly intemperate putdowns of the idea of sacred writings which are believed to contain (in some form or other) the very words of a god. They have been dismissed off-handedly as bronze-age scribblings, the camp-fire maunderings of Middle Eastern goat-herders, and various other dismissively derogatory things, none of which, even if true, would necessarily show that the works do not contain the words of a god. It is a simple informal fallacy to suggest that the origin of a propositional claim is in itself sufficient to defeat it. In any event, the writings of, say, the Jewish Tanach were probably none of them written by goat-herders (notwithstanding the fact that David is depicted therein as a shepherd of the tribe of Benjamin); and, besides, the most primitive parts of the Tanach were probably written during the transition from the bronze age to the early iron age, the later parts originating entirely in the later iron age and extending into the historical period. So it will really not do, however rhetorically clever it is thought to be, to dismiss the writings as flawed because early, or flawed because originating in a period of rudimentary technology.
As for their sophistication, some of the writings of the Tanach are indeed highly sophisticated. In their original Hebrew they do not have the crushingly boring effect that the monotone style of the King James (or Authorised) Version (to take but one example) imposes upon them, and those who have read them with attention and devotion have been able to derive from them, by means of traditional hermeneutic within a living community, a richness of nuance and subtlety which is simply lost on the 21st century reader. Indeed, one of the things which the contemporary reader is unlikely to give to the works is the kind of undivided attention that only the aura of devotion and worship with which they are approached in the religious context can give to the words, making them come alive on the page, so that they are seen as, in some sense, pregnant with personal meaning. So, any believer responding to the criticism of unbelievers will generally say that for those who have the time to read with reverence, and with a religiously elevated spirit, the Bible will be seen to contain the lively oracles of God. Without such reverence, it may be said, they may be as dull as cardboard, but this, the believer may say, is not the fault of God’s Word itself.
This is, of course, one of the problems with fundamentalism, because fundamentalism seems to think that the very surface meaning of the words – that is, meanings which are open to those who can read them with minimal attention, and without any awareness of the possibility of deeper meanings, let alone an ability to derive them by means of focused study and deliberation within a tradition of discourse and interpretation – are sufficient in themselves to provide an unerring guide to God’s word, that the words are themselves large and simple enough in their signification that he who runs may read. This simplistic idea of the meanings of words, let alone the meanings of religious texts, has led to so many idiotic beliefs — using the word ’idiot’ in its more or less original meaning as that which pertains to a single person – that it is hard to believe that some sophisticated intellectuals and even scientists have been fooled into believing, in their religious personas, at any rate, beliefs which their more sophisticated intellectual minds should have rejected as childish and foolish.
On the other hand, it must not be thought that literalism itself is only to be found amongst fundamentalists, for, from the beginning, in some fairly straightforward sense, it seems that the “literal” meaning of sacred texts has been thought to underlie their religiously important signification. Many defenders of Christianity today are very quick to point out Augustine’s claim that the Bible should not be read literally, but figuratively, when it comes to known facts about the world. It will be worthwhile to consider what Augustine has to say in his essay on Genesis, which I have uploaded (for convenience) here (thanks to the College of the Holy Cross). This is important, for it underlies the defence that so many Christian theists have offered to the atheist critique of religious revelation. “You are being overly simplistic,” they say.
We do not read the scriptures as you suggest. Indeed, you are ignoring everything that has been said by biblical scholars over the last couple centuries, where the original context of the scriptural texts is explored, and the meaning related to particular social and cultural contexts which are very distant from ours. We cannot, therefore, simply accept the words as written, but the words as they were understood when first collected in the Bible, and as they have been successively understood in church and synagogue since then, until we reach today, when we are seeking their meaning for our own times. That we accept them as sacred today does not mean that we are committed to their original significations. Indeed, to do that would be unfaithful to the word as we have received it, for we only receive it through a growing tradition of understanding and interpretation. Fundamentalists may be tied to the surface meaning of the text; those who take the text seriously as a word of God must take not only the contemporary situation into account, but also the transformations the contemporary situation imposes upon the text. Indeed, it is a criticism of a religious leader if they fail to take into account, not only science, but the new hermeneutic context in which the text must be read (which, of course, includes science as well as contemporary history and social change).
This is a significant challenge to nonbelievers who have a tendency to read the scriptures as simplistically as the fundamentalists appear to do, and when they do that they have actually opened up a breach in their own defences which can be closed only by taking a serious look at contemporary uses of scripture in contexts where fundamentalism is looked upon, not only as simplistic, but as unfaithful. Read, for example, James Barr’s book Fundamentalism, for a closer consideration of the fault lines between those who read scripture with intellectual sophistication and those who read it as a simple expression of God’s word. We will return to Augustine towards the end, for we need to have a little background before we consider his words.
For, of course, even what I have so far intimated is not sufficient to distinguish fundamentalists and sophisticated believers, because the fundamentalist also reads the Bible with hermeneutic spectacles. Indeed, in many respects, fundamentalists are more constrained in their reading of the text by theological presuppositions than are contemporary biblical scholars who are committed to the critical-historical reading of biblical texts. It was the so-called “higher criticism” of the Bible, after all, which was the main catalyst for the growth of fundamentalism in the first place, by eliciting, from those who would hereafter be called fundamentalists, from the name they gave to themselves, the theological parameters within which, in their view, biblical hermeneutics must confine itself.
They did so, at the outset, in a series of essays collected in volumes with the simple title of The Fundamentals, edited by R.A. Torey. These are still taken as definitive for many Christians today, and the four volume text (or parts of it) is now available in a number of places online, here, here and here. A fairly small number of “fundamental” theological presuppositions govern the fundamentalist reading of scripture. Considering only Christian fundamentalism, these fundamentals can be read off from the titles of many of the essays collected in The Fundamentals. Here are a few of them:
The Deity of Christ
The God-Man
The Person and Work of Christ
The Certainty and the Importance of the Resurrection
The Virgin Birth of Christ
At-One-Ment, By Propitiation
The Biblical Conception of Sin
Justification by Faith
The Decadence of Darwinism
The Coming of Christ
It is important to take note of the fact that the Bible is being read through these (as well as other) lenses, if we are to understand why fundamentalism is so resistant to the simple expedient of rational criticism, such as that provided, within the churches themselves, by the critical-historical study of the Bible. The Bible is not being read “literally,” as is so often suggested; it is being read according to a fairly comprehensive collection of theological presuppositions in terms of which the Bible must deliver a specifiable saving message for which (it is held) evidence can be found in the words of the Bible correctly read. Indeed, the term ‘literalism’ itself is a two-edged sword, and implicitly convicts the accuser as well as the accused.
Of course, amongst those fundamental presuppositions are conceptions of the Bible and its truth, and here we come upon one of the most serious shortcomings at the basis of all Christian doctrines, namely, belief in revelation as in some sense unproblematic. Even those who read scripture in a more critical fashion still rely upon the conception of the Bible as “holy writ”, that is, as something in itself holy or sacred, something with unique significance and authority. Without this assumption there is no reason, other than historical, for giving such priority to one collection of texts. But this is in itself problematic. Even if the text itself were to claim authority, this would not automatically confer authority upon it, since anyone or any text could similarly claim authority, or have authority claimed for it, and it has in fact been claimed for many, both persons and texts. How could such a claim be justified, apart from presenting evidence that what it says is indeed, in relevant ways, true?
Here is the central problem facing anyone who, for example, wants to claim any kind of “revealed” authority for a text. Suppose that, instead of reading the Christian Bible through the theological lenses used by the fundamentalists, we were, instead, to take seriously the findings of the critical-historical criticism of the Bible, as some more liberal types of Christianity claim to do. So, instead of accepting the Bible as true in every word, we will qualify that claim by saying that that the Bible represents the Word of God in the words of men (and, if Harold Bloom is right, at least one woman, namely, the J, or Jahwist, author of the Torah or Pentateuch). In this case, God is thought to speak (in a sense) obliquely through the fallible words of human beings, but God’s word, nonetheless, we are assured, is expressed in and through the biblical text. Now, of course, if is accepted that it is only to be found at one or more removes from the biblical text itself, as that text enters the ongoing and possibly never finished conversation of the church, then it is not clear that any particular reading of the text can be ascribed any kind of definitive status. But here is where the two-edged sword (mentioned above) comes in, for, if it is impossible to hear the word of God directly from the scriptures, as a clear and undisputed word from the Lord, since the scriptures are acknowledged to be the work of human authors, and therefore fallible as all things human are, the question immediately arises as to why these particular works, from amongst all the fallible works written by human beings, should be so privileged as to be distinguished from all other writings as in themselves uniquely conveying God’s Word in human words?
This problem was evident to the first fundamentalists, who therefore went to great trouble to shelter the biblical text from the imputation of human error by any means of studying or considering the contents thereof in such a way as to expose its content to the vagaries of historical criticism. It is even more likely, for the same reason, that Muslims will be unwilling to submit their holy text to the same kinds of interpretive insecurity. They already have an example of how such forms of historical study erode a text’s unique authority. For once interpretation is as free, say, as that practiced by the Anglican bishop John Spong, is there any sense in suggesting that the book should be given some kind of unique authority, in relation to other literature of the same or similar kind, in either our personal or our social lives?
This is basically the question asked by C.H. Dodd, a Welsh New Testament scholar and Protestant (Congregationalist) theologian, author of the book, The Authority of the Bible. After telling us of the Bible as a record of the religion of Israel, he says:
We come back therefore to the same question from which we started, What is that world of experience which in religion must provide us with the authoritative data for all our thinking? [First Edition, 1928, 152]
However, looking at the history he has recounted he has to admit that
[t]his does not tell us why, under this head, we should attach unique authority to the Bible. Any historical literature, equally sincere, equally broad in its outlook and profound in its knowledge of human nature, would bring us this communion with the life of our kind. Perhaps we should have to look very far for a literature equal in these respects to the Bible. But its specific authority for us rests upon further considerations. [152-3]
And then he points us forward to Chapter XII, which is entitled “Progress in Religion,” which we will consider in the next instalment of this post; for this one is already becoming cumbrous and long, so a closer look at Augustine and a further look at Dodd will have to await “Is there a liberal Christian theism? II.” At this point, then, we take a break, but if you wish to read the next installment, it will presuppose much that is said here. The most important question is whether there is really a radical difference between fundamentalist “literalism” — which is, as I have suggested, already a hermeneutic reading of the text — and the alternative hermeneutic of liberal Christianity. I am not convinced that there is. I will address this question in “Is there a liberal Christian theism? II”
Posted on 21 January 2013, in Bible & Sacred Text, Liberal Christianity. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments.
This is fascinating intellectual history, Eric. I had not been aware of the origin of “fundamentalism”.
But doesn’t the question of the existence of god circumvent the whole argument of the authority and interpretation of sacred scripture? No god, no word of god. Every religion’s scripture has to stand on its own and make its claim as a guide for humankind. Scholars can parse the meaning of words and phrases all they want. It may get them closer to the meaning of the authors, but it will not get them any closer to god’s truth or god’s will. Because there ain’t no such thing!
Right. Look, sophisticated or not, this “theology” is still essentailly a bunch of rehabilitated iron age mythology. Maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to interpret “The Stud” by Jackie Collins as accurately and comprehensively describing the state of affairs in the entire universe, but seriously, what are the chances?
Errantists cannot give evidence that the Tankah and the Testament are more than the rants of miserable, mean-minded misanthropes, with all that atrocious and stupid morality, contradictions without and within.
We need no message of how to live from the former and the latter’s notion of salvation is barbaric. We need no blood sacrifice for expiation, and we need not expiate for not wanting to lift our rears into the air or what form of self-abuse any religion demands.
We would owe putative God nothing. He’d have no rights over us, no right to judge or punish us, and barbarians glorify Hell. Lamberth’s argument from autonomy notes that our level of consciousness gives us our rights and liberties, neither the state nor – God, despite those who claim the latter!
Per Fr. Meslier’s the problem of Heaven, He’d face that one-way street of having to have put us into a better place in the first place. He’d have no right to demand soul-making or worship!
This gnu atheist goes to the heart of theism- superstition!
Neither those two anthologies of hate, nor the Qur’an have any reliability or authority. Any good from them, we can find elsewhere. Indeed, Esop’s Fables for me rate much, much higher!
I have nothing but contempt for those writings and their writers! And as literature, why, I don’t read fiction anyway!
We rationalists do recognize the angst of believers!
Sophistication isn’t really a good benchmark for truth. It just means that someone has spent a lot of time thinking about something. A lot of times, sophistication is actually detrimental because the sophistication papers over any flaws in fundamental premises that might undermine the entire effort. It doesn’t take a million wrong steps to arrive at a wrong conclusion, it only takes one. Sophistication isn’t a substitute for checking your basic premises.
I do a lot of social dancing, and most people who see me dance assume that I’m an instructor or something. While I have been dancing a while, one of the most important things I’ve learned is that you can have all of the fancy footwork or cool spins/moves or whatever, but if your fundamentals aren’t on point, then you will be a crappy dancer no matter how sophisticated your moves are. So I always make it a point, when I go to a dance event that has lessons, to take beginner classes. Of course, almost without fail, I learn something at these beginner lessons.
Another example that can use is an example from my own line of work doing software engineering. Someone could write the most sophisticated code possible, but if there’s one parenthesis missing or even something less obvious than that, then the code simply isn’t going to work as you intended, if at all. In this case, the sophistication makes it harder to spot these sorts of basic errors.
And then there are conspiracy theories, which are notorious for being sophisticated. There is music that is sophisticated, as in technically complex and well thought out, but doesn’t sound good. There are so many examples of things that are sophisticated, yet garbage, that I have a hard time being impressed when someone says that something of theirs, like a pet belief, a project, or what-have-you, is sophisticated. Sophistication just means that you’re using your brain, (granted, this is a good thing!) but you can still use your brain incorrectly.
It’s worth pointing out too that if the Bible is not regarded as sacred, then it becomes only one of a vast number of moral and ethical guides written throughout history in various cultures right up to the modern day. Even if you feel the need of a spiritual guide from centuries ago, it’s not a choice between the Bible and nothing; it’s a choice between the Bible and Plato, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tze, Epicurus, Bacon, Rousseau, Hobbes, etc, etc.
I suspect that the debate hinges on the use of the word rational. Although I am wary of dividing people into categories I think it is possible to consider how liberal Christian theism fits in to categories of belief.
People will not be surprised (from my comments in other threads) by my assertion that belief comes in various forms. There is a compelling belief arising from a personal ‘spiritual’ experience, there is a profound belief reflecting the security of social approval and order, there is mundane belief reflecting social fashion, and (for want of a better word) philosophical belief arising from argumentation. There are many other ways of categorising belief, but I contend that the compelling/profound/mundane/philosophical ‘scale’ is underpinned by human nature… compelling belief is primarily emotional and armoured against rationality, belief then morphs in stages to philosophical belief which is primarily rational and dismissive of emotional claims.
Can atheism be categorised in a similar way? I think it could… but it would be a false categorisation. I suppose there might be a small number of atheists with a compelling or profound belief that there are no gods, but I would argue that most atheists accept that there are probably no gods as a rational proposition. This makes Eric’s point that atheism must respond to “rational” liberal Christians – but I suspect that the liberal Christian’s belief is still going to be carried along by the pre rational beliefs of other Christians. And this makes tackling the liberal Christians more of a challenge than you may expect.
A thought experiment: If there was absolutely unshakeable proof that Christianity started as a manufactured religion (such as a cache of documents setting out the reasoning behind a political or business scam) would people with compelling or profound beliefs change them? I suspect not. Rational argument cannot touch their emotionally based beliefs. Some modern religions/cults have been exposed as scams, yet some people still believe.
Two points, Eric:
1. I don’t think it is simply a rhetorical trick to dismiss scripture as originating with Bronze- or Iron-Age shepherds or goatherds. The point is that if this is the revealed word of an omniscient God, why does it reflect only the state of knowledge of the world mundanely accessible to such primitive peoples? Yes, the language would have had to have been intelligible within that culture, but surely that would not pose a problem for an omniscient being?! “Disease is not caused by demons, but by animals smaller than the eye can see…” Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan had this in mind when they wrote, “The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on its divine inspiration.” (The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark).
2. Re hermeneutics. Again, an omnipotent being should have no problem in ensuring that the original scripture (and even all subsequent translations) were as pellucid as can be. What we have is the equivalent of (or worse than) a bomb-disposal manual that says, “Cut the red wire, after cutting the blue wire.” Claiming that God deliberately obfuscated his message seems to be at odds with the parts of the Bible that are plain and clear. But I suppose omniconsistency isn’t a devine trait…
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Are there any reasons to consider any text sacred? I think first the believer has to show that their said deity exists and commanded the said text to be written for any non-believer to consider this text as holy. To this end therefore, we can read the bible as we read the works of Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Socrates and so on. We can look for nuanced meaning, but it will all be semantics in attempts to qualify the said text as sacred.
The starting point as Paxton says is for definitive evidence for the existence of the god in question which, Eric has said will not be answered in our lifetime and probably the next.
Eric, thank you so much for this wise and thoughtful post. It helps me to understand why, even as an unwavering atheist, I often feel ill at ease in the glib, “smarty-pants” ambiance of so many atheist fora and gatherings.
I am currently in the interesting situation of having to absorb a fair amount of fairly complex technical information — equipment selection, protocols and data analysis requirements for 4D live-cell fluorescence imaging, if anyone cares — during the day at work. At night, for a philosophy course I am taking, I read Plato, Confucius, Taoism and some Buddhist writings. I am struck at how fundamentally different are the intellectual demands of the two sets of readings. The authors of the technical material strive to be as clear and as precise as possible. From a textual-interpretive standpoint, the text is all surface: the words say what they mean and are even supplemented by diagrams. What makes it tough going is that the material is technical and often quantitative, which means that you have to constantly check that you are getting the surface meaning, but there’s no ambiguity. The implications are stated, the assumptions are rooted in empirically verifiable results, are independent of culture and any assertion can be verified in a hundred other texts.
Plato and the Taoists are different. The surface meaning of the words I read in translation is straightforward and undemanding. In my course, I am allowed to sidestep the added difficulty of translation and assume that my translators have rendered everything perfectly. Even still, there are nuances in the texts that only emerge after re-reading and re-re-reading. In Plato, for example, you can’t understand his writings on epistemology without being aware of his thoughts about the immortality of the soul. Chuangtse is almost always metaphorical, often tongue-in-cheek or ironic, and likes to having a laugh at the expense of the Confucians. It’s been 20 years since I’ve had to read non-scientific texts and be accountable to an expert in my understanding of them and it has taken me a while to start to read them like a humanities scholar.
I think scientists tend to devalue the skills of liberal arts scholars, because they have a contempt for the epistemilc status of “non-science”. Certainly, the excesses of academia liberated from scholarly rigor are mockable (po-mo, Sokal hoax etc.), but mythology is more than stories about monsters, gods and magic. Dismissing the Bible because it is a branch of fantastic literature written in the past is ignorance, pure and simple. Iron age humans had the same intellectual capabilities as modern Homo sapiens, maybe more (See Jared Diamond on hunter-gatherer intelligence vs that of urban dwellers). Personally, for depth of thought , I’d take Ecclesiastes over most of the popular atheist books written in the last 20 years. Genesis, not so much.
Thanks all for your comments. As you will see, as you go through, each step of the way is a step towards a conclusion which does not, in many respects, differ from many expressed here. However, I do have one concern. I still think that it is too glib to say that the Bible, and other similar works, simply reflect stone-age (as is sometimes claimed) or bronze or iron age sheepherder’s beliefs. There is often a depth and penetration in the Bible that should not simply be ignored. If you look at the Bible in its full historical sweep, as, for example, people like John Spong try to do (who, according to his critics, sometimes does it badly), you will see a definite progress in the understanding and a sharper delineation of a concept of God which is reflective of real progress in human understanding. It is too easy to dismiss pre-scientific works as empty of significance, because we now know so much better. This is a carelessness with the truth that is not becoming of those who seek to be rational. There may be no reason to think any text sacred — I do not think that there is — but it is too superficial to say that, therefore, texts which have been so considered have nothing of value to teach us. Despite my sometimes harsh criticism of the Bible, a criticism which is necessary because of the status the Bible is still too often claimed to have, I do not want it to be thought that, as a purely human work, seeking (no doubt with inadequate tools) to understand what it meant to be here in what is, after all, very complex and mystifying even to us, who know so much more, the Bible is valueless. As revelation, it leaves much to be desired, but there are good reasons, in terms of cultural evolution, why the Bible should have come before science, and why it should have been found satisfying to so many, as it still is, strangely to so many still. I understand the points that Ant is making, but it still seems to me bad form simply to dismiss the Bible and other supposedly sacred texts in the way that atheists often do. Those who read the Bible or the Tanach or the Gita as sacred texts are aware of their blemishes, especially as to their scientific content (fundamentalism, being the product of a scientific culture, is an exception to this), but they continue to read them for their religious content, which is a different thing. That doesn’t make their religious content true, but it does explain why people still take these texts seriously. The sacred texts that I think are of least value, including the Book of Mormon and the Qur’an, are pastiches of earlier texts, and completely artificial constructions from start to finish. They have a very different “feel” than the ones that are more organically related to the histories of the communities in which they evolved.
[Right on, Eric. I'd like to share what I found on the never boring internet - this!]
(This article reveals research that’s No. 1 on the “hate list” of millions of “fundy” Christians
because it shows that their idolized “rapture” belief – the inspiration behind Lindsey’s and LaHaye’s all-time bestsellers – is only a 19th century invention and that credit long given to John Darby should go to a long unknown 15-year-old girl in Scotland!)
Margaret Macdonald’s Rapture Chart !
“church” RAPTURE “church”
(present age) (tribulation)
In early 1830 Margaret was the very first one to see a pre-Antichrist (pretribulation) rapture in the Bible – and John Walvoord and Hal Lindsey lend support for this claim!
Walvoord’s “Rapture Question” (1979) says her view resembles the “partial-rapture view” and Lindsey’s “The Rapture” (1983) admits that “she definitely teaches a partial rapture.”
But there’s more. Lindsey (p. 26) says that partial rapturists see only “spiritual” Christians in the rapture and “unspiritual” ones left behind to endure Antichrist’s trial. And Walvoord (p. 97) calls partial rapturists “pretribulationists”!
Margaret’s pretrib view was a partial rapture form of it since only those “filled with the Spirit” would be raptured before the revealing of the Antichrist. A few critics, who’ve been repeating more than researching, have noted “Church” in the tribulation section of her account. Since they haven’t known that all partial rapturists see “Church” on earth after their pretrib rapture (see above chart), they’ve wrongly assumed that Margaret was a posttrib!
In Sep. 1830 Edward Irving’s journal “The Morning Watch” (hereafter: TMW) was the first to publicly reflect her novel view when it saw spiritual “Philadelphia” raptured before “the great tribulation” and unspiritual “Laodicea” left on earth.
In Dec. 1830 John Darby (the so-called “father of dispensationalism” even though he wasn’t first on any crucial aspect of it!) was still defending the historic posttrib rapture view in the “Christian Herald.”
Pretrib didn’t spring from a “church/Israel” dichotomy, as many have assumed, but sprang from a “church/church” one, as we’ve seen, and was based only on symbols!
But innate anti-Jewishness soon appeared. (As noted, TMW in Sep. 1830 saw only less worthy church members left behind.) In Sep. 1832 TMW said that less worthy church members and “Jews” would be left behind. But by Mar. 1833 TMW was sure that only “Jews” would face the Antichrist!
As late as 1837 the non-dichotomous Darby saw the church “going in with Him to the marriage, to wit, with Jerusalem and the Jews.” And he didn’t clearly teach pretrib until 1839. His basis then was the Rev. 12:5 “man child…caught up” symbol he’d “borrowed” (without giving credit) from Irving who had been the first to use it for the same purpose in 1831!
For related articles Google “X-Raying Margaret,” “Edward Irving is Unnerving,” “Pretrib Rapture’s Missing Lines,” “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “Deceiving and Being Deceived” by D.M., “Pretrib Rapture Pride,” “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” and “Scholars Weigh My Research.” The most documented and accurate book on pretrib rapture history is “The Rapture Plot” (see Armageddon Books online) – a 300-pager that has hundreds of disarming facts (like the ones above) not found in any other source.
The Real Morgan Edwards
by George Wilson
In 1995, in a 24-page booklet on 18th century pastor Morgan Edwards, evangelist John Bray claimed that Edwards taught a pretrib rapture in his 1788 book titled “Two Academical Exercises….”
Those echoing Bray include Thomas Ice who wrote “Morgan Edwards: Another Pre-Darby Rapturist.” Edwards’ 1788 work can be found on the internet.
In order to claim that Edwards held to pretrib, candidates for the I-can-find-pretrib-earlier-in-church-history-than-you-can medal – including Bray, Ice, LaHaye, Frank Marotta etc. – have intentionally covered up Edwards’ “historicism,” his belief that the tribulation had already been going on for hundreds of years. (How can anyone in the tribulation go back in time and look for a pretrib rapture?)
Here’s proof of Edwards’ historicism and its companion “day-year” theory which can view the 1260 tribulation “days” as “years.”
On p. 14 Edwards described the Ottoman Empire (which was then already 400 years old) as the Rev. 13:11 “beast.” On p. 20 he defined “Antichrist” as the already 1000-year-old “popery” and the “succession of persons” known as “Popes” – his other Rev. 13 “beast.” He necessarily viewed Rev. 13′s 1260-day period as 1260 literal years in order to provide enough time for his two “beasts.”
On p. 19, while discussing “the ministry of the witnesses” of Rev. 11, he allotted “about 204 years” for their “years to perform” – years impossible to fit into a 3.5-year period!
What about Edwards’ rapture? On pp. 21-23 he wrote about “the appearing of the son of man in the clouds, coming to raise the dead saints and change the living, and to catch them up to himself….The signs of Christ’s appearing in the clouds will be extraordinary ‘wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines,’ &. (Matth. xxiv. 6-8.)….The signs of his coming, in the heavens will be ‘the trump of God [I Thess. 4:16], vapor and smoke, which will darken the sun and moon [Matt. 24:29],’…and also cause those meteors called ‘falling stars’….
Right after his combined rapture/advent (!), Edwards said: “And therefore, now, Antichrist…will…counterfeit the preceding wonders in heaven…causing ‘fire to come down from heaven’….And that godhead he will now assume, after killing the two witnesses….Now the great persecution of the Jews will begin…for time, times, and half a time….”
Thomas Ice’s article on Edwards (see first par. above) quoted only the first 27 words in the above quotation, ending with “to himself.” This sort of unethical revisionism is constantly employed by many pretrib defenders.
Not only had most of Edwards’ historicist tribulation occurred before his combined rapture/advent, but his Antichrist kept raging for 3.5 years even after the Matt. 24 signs! No wonder his tutor advised him to correct his thesis!
To read Edwards’ complete work, Google “[PDF] Two Academical Exercises…www.breadoflifebiblestudy.com.”
For more info on Edwards, Google “McPherson Page” (click on a reproduction of “Cover-Ups”). Also Google “Deceiving and Being Deceived” by historian Dave MacPherson.
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