|
Link to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-bible-contemporary.htm
A Contemporary Understanding of the Bible
The Christian Bible was the cause of terrible acts of violence and wars in many periods of Church History. Whether it were the Crusades, the burning of witches or the forced conversion of the Indios: everything was justified with statements from the Bible. Even though the critical Bible research was introduced into the Catholic Church more than 50 years ago, many Christians still have considerable difficulties with biblical texts.
Quote of a father of 4 children: “I feel more love and mercy for my children than God obviously has for us human beings, about whom we are taught from the Bible in church services.” Statement of another father of several children regarding (in relation to) some Sunday readings: “I can no longer listen to these blasphemies at Sunday Services.” Statement of a pupil who wanted to know how the world and people came into being and therefore studied the school Bible: “ “Reverend, what is written in the Bible is not true at all!”
On July 10, 2017, Bishop Oster from Passau reported on “domradio.de” about a survey of 15- to 35-year-olds who stay away from church in the USA, and that over 60 percent said the reason was “because they no longer consider a scientific, modern worldview to be compatible with faith.” It is clear that they mean with “faith” the creation-texts of the Bible.
The crisis of faith in our time is therefore above all a crisis of understanding the Holy Scripture, the Bible. But the frightening effects of the Holy Scriptures of other religions in our time are also an urgent challenge to reflect on the origins and on fundamental understanding of Holy Scriptures.
**************************************************************************************************************
Wonder as the origin of religion: Ever since man has existed, he tried to understand himself and the world: himself, his coexistence with his fellow men, his natural environment and the world and existence as a whole; because he wants to shape his life in this network in a meaningful and "correct" way. Over the centuries, man has learned to understand and make use of many (interrelations) interconnections in nature through observation and experience.
This consciousness emerged many thousands of years ago and awoke an amazement about the wonders of nature and about one's own existence. This amazement can be seen as the origin of all religions. Through this wonder, people began not only to fight for daily survival, but to reflect about the meaning of their existence. The experiences of death and transience, of illness, suffering and conflicts intensified the search for a great order behind the visible world and the search for rules and rituals that would provide stability and security for life.
People don't just ask about the "How" of the world, but also about the "Why". Since people in the early days of history were unable to understand the laws of the forces of nature, the stars and the microscopic world, they developed myths that were intended to explain the origin of the world and human existence. But these mythical stories were by no means just about an idea of the external process of the creation of the world and man, but rather about conveying the value and the meaning of the world and human existence.
Experiences of value and meaning are communicated in mythological stories. People who were particularly sensitive in terms of their spiritual and inner abilities tried to convey their experiences of value and meaning in mythological stories to the community and its descendants. However, mythological stories use the ideas and schemes of the world that were common at the time they were created.
They therefore always contain the two elements: on one hand external ideas about the world and people that were specific to the time, and on the other hand statements of value and meaning, which are expressed in a symbolic imagery that is similar to the language of dreams. The latter probably also because there were no linguistic terms for experiences of meaning and value - and images, parables and stories have a more holistic effect than abstract terms.
Experiences of value and meaning are experienced as gifts. Experiences of value and (purpose) meaning are not the result of rational search and thought, but are given as a spontaneous emerge of thoughts and experiences. Whether it is the emotion about the beauty of nature at a glorious sunrise or when looking at the starry sky at night, whether it is a deep feeling of belonging to the whole of the great community of life in nature or the joy and wonder that arises when looking at one's own newborn child - these are experiences that people see as gifts, as something that flows to them. Therefore, such experiences of value and purpose were and are seen by many people as a revelation of the deity, a revelation that opens the door to the "truth" of life.
Experiences of value as revelations of value and revelations of God's will: Ethics with divine justification It was always important for people to consider the practical consequences of value and meaning for their lives. So later on, not only the mythological stories recorded in texts, that were supposed to convey value and meaning, were considered as “Holy Scriptures", but also the commandments and prohibitions that were to regulate everyday life as a consequence of this world and view of life. They were understood as "revelations of the will" of the deity and as part of the "Holy Scripture". Some of these scriptures attempted to regulate life down to the last detail - such as the "Old Testament" for the Israelites. By qualifying them as "divine commandments", these rules of life were given divine authority and their violation was considered as disobedience to God himself: as a sin. Since violating these rules of life can harm one's own life or the community, it is understandable that this was seen as an act against God and is still seen that way by many believers today, since God is considered by believers to be the creator and sustainer of life.
The basic
question is still the same today: Now our modern natural sciences have developed unimaginable knowledge about the world in both large and small, but are still faced with the same challenge as people in prehistoric times: The value and purpose of the world and of human existence cannot be understood, no matter how much knowledge and rational research is used. Experiences of value and purpose are of a completely different nature than rational knowledge alone. But our minds are able to, and naturally try to, assign experiences of value and purpose to current rational knowledge about the world and human existence, so that together they result in a unified view of life. In the church, however, this has not been possible for many people for centuries, since the church has rejected and fought against modern scientific insights for centuries - and many believers are still influenced in their thinking by this conflict - and a contemporary doctrine of faith in this regard is still a long way off.
What is today’s problem with the “Holy Scriptures”? Why are religions and their “Holy Scriptures” taken less and less serious today as an answer to questions of value and purpose or have frightening consequences? How should these “Holy Scriptures” principally be evaluated? The following considerations primarily refer to the view and meaning of the Bible, the Christian “Holy Scripture”.
1. The “Holy Scriptures” are not scientific “revelations”: The mythological stories of the “Holy Scriptures” clothe experiences of value and meaning in images and stories. Among other things, the world views of than time are used as narrative material. In later epochs, however, there is the danger that these myths are not understood as a language of symbols and parables, but as a permanently valid revelation of a scientific process. In the Galileo conflict at the beginning of the 17th century and also later at the beginning of the 20th century (!), the Catholic Church, rejecting the findings of evolution, demanded belief in the literal validity of the biblical creation texts. For several centuries, it fought against scientific discoveries and suppressed them within its sphere of influence. As a result, faith and knowledge have increasingly fallen apart for believers. Experiences in nature, which have been an essential part of the experiences of the Devine for thousands of years, have become a source of doubts about faith for many people and have led to an inner conflict between personal thinking and faith. The theological questions related to this (man’s need of salvation in the context of evolutionary knowledge) have not yet been resolved.
2. The uncritical mixing of time-based and permanently lasting values: In their search for the purpose of world and life and in their search for the "right" way of life, people had experiences of values for thousands of years that have a lasting validity, such as that people should feel deeply connected to the earth or that people of all nations have an equal right to exist, ... But such permanently lasting experiences of value are mixed in the "Holy Scriptures" with experiences of value that had a time-based validity: For example, in order to secure the survival of one's own group, it was seen as permissible and possibly even required to kill the enemy or to eliminate the lawbreaker in one's own ranks because he threatened to destroy the order of coexistence. Or: Women who were particularly spiritual sensitive threatened to unsettle the community dominated by men. Therefore, people believed that such women had to be killed as witches.
However, since the leaders of the religious communities proclaimed the values and rules of the time, as well as the values that are valid forever, as revelations of divine will and therefore binding forever, they lost authority among more and more people who thought about the values themselves. Catholic professors and other well-known Catholics in the USA, in opposition to Pope Francis, have defended the death penalty for our time (August 2018), because it was demanded in the Old Testament as a "divine truth" more than 2500 years ago (Gen 9:6)!???
3. Secondary values overshadow primary values: The Sabbath rest of the Jews was not only for relaxation, but also for reflection on life and awareness of the values of the community. For Jesus, who healed a sick man on the Sabbath compassion and willingness to help took priority over keeping the Sabbath rest: “The Sabbath is for people!” For centuries, the “church commandments” (Sunday obligation, Friday commandment, etc.) of the Catholic Church seemed more important than the main commandment of love. Commandments and prohibitions were not proclaimed as means to protect and realize fundamental values, but as direct revelations of God’s will that oblige to obey without any personal reflection.
Until a few years ago, the leadership of the Catholic Church considered it more important for a priest who fathered a child with a woman to be available to the church as a priest - independent of a family - than for him to look after woman and child. Leaders of religious communities who represent a false hierarchy of values are losing authority in our time, when more and more people reflect about values for themselves. The "Holy Scriptures" mix primary and secondary values. If those responsible for religious communities do not formulate a clear hierarchy of values and thus the correct connection between values and commandments, the "Holy Scriptures" lose their validity for believers.
4. Experiences of value expressed in myths sometimes have dangerous "side effects": Similar to how strong drugs in modern medicine can have dangerous side effects for some people, the harmful consequences of which can be far worse than the healing effect, some biblical stories can also have a very negative psychological and spiritual effect. One of the biggest problems of the church (but also of other religions) is that the negative effects of some texts of their "Holy Scripture", which in some cases extend over long stretches of church history, are not recognized and dealt with.
Here are some examples: Gen 3: “Fall of Man” narrative Atoning death of Jesus on the cross
5. The Bible as “history of the evolution of truth” Similar to the constant development of knowledge in the various sciences, the understanding and perception of values has also developed over the course of the Bible’s creation. The chronological sequence of the creation of the biblical texts covers a period of more than 1000 years.
As far as the scientific world view is
concerned, there are books that describe the current state of knowledge,
which is what most people are interested in, but there are also books that
describe the historical development of research into an area of knowledge,
such as “The History of Astronomy”.
As far as the values and ideas about the meaning of life in the Bible are concerned, here too we are dealing with a kind of documentation of the development of ideas about values and models about the meaning of life. Therefore, it also contains values, models about the meaning of life and moral instructions that we consider to be outdated from today's perspective and no longer valid for our time (See my text compilation and my theses on >> Gen 22 - The Sacrifice of Isaac).
However, there are religious leaders and believers who consider all statements in their “Holy Scriptures” to be equally valid for our time. They then do not want to perceive the very strange contradictions that arise in this point of view and develop seemingly acrobatic arguments to bend the texts so that they make sense for our time.
It then takes a whole army of “scribes” to reinterpret biblical texts until they make the sense that they are supposed to make in their eyes. If biblical texts are read out in church services that contain outdated values, but the words “Word of the living God” are added at the end, then of course critically thinking believers are driven out of the church.
It certainly cannot be a question of censoring the Bible and removing texts from it. This would make the development processes of values, models of the meaning of life and the moral demands derived from them no longer recognizable.
In the history of life on our planet, evolution, including the many extinct animal species and prehistoric human species, must also be seen as a unit. For paleontologists, it is important to consider the whole of the development of life. But for the ordinary citizen it is not necessary to know all the dinosaur species being researched today in order to organize their everyday life.
Anyone who therefore calls for naïve Bible reading to strengthen faith is above all creating uncertainty and confusion - or else promoting a fundamentalist, intolerant and narrow-minded practice of religion and a corresponding attitude to life.
Necessary tasks of the church leadership: What are the most important tasks that church leaders would have to perform in relation to dealing with the Bible for our time?
1. The experiences of value and meaning of the people of our time and of the last centuries, as well as the threats to them, should be presented as the "signs of the times" that Christians should primarily concern themselves with: human dignity, human rights, women's rights, children's rights, separation of powers, unity of humanity, closeness to nature and responsibility for creation, self-knowledge and personal responsibility and responsibility for the "whole", animal rights, ... .
2. With the help of modern sciences (natural sciences, psychology,
anthropology, social sciences, ... ), a contemporary image of man, world view
and understanding of God should be developed and proclaimed in dialogue with
biblical and modern value experiences. Above all, the prayers and liturgical
rites and texts should be adapted to these findings. 3. Our current knowledge of the origins and the fundamental role
and meaning of "Holy Scriptures" in their creation should be
described. 4. In the case of creation texts that deal with the origins of the
world and man, the current state of scientific knowledge should be presented
to children in religious education classes or to believers in the
proclamation of faith before an interpretation of the respective texts of the
Bible. 5. Above all, it is important to describe the evolutionary character of the Bible as a whole as well as of many individual statements, so that it becomes clear how some values have already developed during the period in which the biblical texts were created. Examples: - The role of women as a "help" for men to become equal persons. - The view of children: From the father's property to the recognition of their own dignity. - The perspective of God: From tribal god to universal creator god. - The view of man: From receiving orders to responsible co-worker
in building the kingdom of - Jesus' self-understanding: From "sent only to the lost
children of Israel" to a mission for
6. It is necessary to make the biblical authors' experiences of value and meaning clear as the background for the central statements of the Bible. The central statements of the Bible should not be presented in a theological-dogmatic language, but in a language that has to do with the experiences and the reality of life of people at that time.
7. It is necessary - according to the possibilities of today's knowledge - to work out more clearly the "center of the gospel" and a "hierarchy of truths" of the Bible, which serve as criteria for the evaluation and interpretation of the other texts. Newer findings, e.g. in anthropology, psychology, natural sciences and sociology, can make it necessary to update this "hierarchy of truths" again and again.
8. The church should compile a list of the worst biblical texts
and make them known. The description of the background to their creation and
their significance and effects at the time must not be used to defend itself.
It is harmful for believers if such criticism of the Bible is only presented
from outside, by enemies of the church.
|
