Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 December 2008 09:44:04
'The Savage Text:The Use and Abuse of the Bible', the new book by Adrian Thatcher, was my snow day reading yesterday. In his introduction Thatcher sets out his stall. He is an Anglican, committed to a "radically inclusive Christian Church", (p9). He sees the bible as a witness to Christ, rather than as a guidebook for living and so regards himself as being neither liberal or evangelical. Rather, as one reads the book it is clear he inhabits the radical centre which traditional models, (involving evangelical, liberal, catholic and orthodox boxes), tend to ignore or critics dismiss from all directions. As a case study, outlining the dangers of a literal reading of the bible he gives his contribution to the homosexuality debate. The interpretations of key texts he gives are those which will be familiar to anybody who has heard James Alison speak, (and which are well explained in the Greebelt talk Alison gave on "Dealing with the Clobber Texts"). That is Thatcher, like Alison, views them as condeming prostitution and inhospitality to strangers, etc. Thatcher argues that it the acceptance of the "traditional", more literal readings which has led to a state of unconsicous homophobia amongst the general population. This is somewhere I would take issue with Thatcher. I agree with the point Gene Robinson made during last summers lecture at Kent, (which I blogged about), where he made the distinction between homophobia and heterosexism, and said most people weren't homophobic but in our culture heterosexism was the norm. Thatcher then moves us on to look at biblical interpretation. Using racism/slavery, anti-semitism, sexism and attitudes towards children as his main examples he shows how the bible has been used to justify many abuses in the past, which have been seen as acceptable by society at the time. The guidebook approach, he argues, leads to conflicting evidence in all cases. He shows in each case how change has occurred when people have looked at the scriptures through the lens of Jesus teaching and through the eyes of the abused. Within this section of the book he also examines the horrors which have been justified by a literal understanding of the book of Revelation. In part three, he goes on to argue against us turning the bible into an idol, on an equal footing with the divine. He is arguing for a theology which is more Christ centred than bible centred. To argue this point he identifies the debates amongst the reformers regarding what should be regarded as part of the authentic cannon, aswell as bringing up diputes about authorship and inconsistencies between translations. He then goes on to point out the obvious, but oft forgotten point, that when we talk of the bible speaking to us we are using a metaphor to describe our interpretation. Finally he does come up with a set of guidelines on how he believes we should read the bible: 1)"Read the bible to learn of God's word" 2) "Expect moral and spiritual development through the bible" 3)"Read the Old Testament through the New Testament" 4) "Read the bible through the Rule" (or principal creeds) 5) "Make the Love Commandments the guide to ethical practice" 6) "Treat the bible as primary tradition" 7) "Let the Spirit show us Jesus" All in all a highly readable, if somewhat controversial book which I would recommend. Whilst I didn't appreciate the underlying attack on evangelicalism he was making I did find this to be an interesting book which disturbed, challenged and encouraged me. I also appreciated the effort Thatcher had put into making this book accessible to a wider audience. Key to this was the putting of technical terms in bold and including a glossary explaining what they meant in the back.