Biblical inerrancy movement is actually a "very new phenomenon". Is this true?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Is that ‘old time religion’ not so old time?

Re this statement by Resa Aslan - Reza Aslan destroys biblical literalism: “The Gospels are absolutely replete with historical errors”

The wiki is here and seems to support the claim that that most of the push into modernity for current Bibical inerrancy/literalism stated with the push against the process of post- Enlightenment science based truth effectively deconstructing the Bible to a mythos.

This movement was mainly initiated by conservative American Churches in the 1800’s but did not really catch fire as a hard stand for Biblical inerrancy until relatively recently, but it also references that literal belief in the virgin birth and miracles was a given for early Christian scholars.

2

I can’t say for sure that the statements are accurate (or any value thereof), but I am perpetually amazed at how the extreme, narrow, fundamentalist, literal-Bible movement swelled from fringe elements to a major segment of US Christianity - largely the Southern Baptist Convention - which came to influence most of US Protestantism, and moreso the collective national view of Christianity.

Thus we have people who are startled to find that, say, the Catholics are not particularly literalist except in doctrine, and can accept the largely allegorical nature of scripture, especially the non-historical books of the OT.

I’m of the position that Christians who take their faith seriously in the 21st century need to mount a strong campaign to reclaim it from the nonsense-mongers who have dominated headlines, politics and social oppression and have defined it to their own ends for the last few decades.

3

I read Reza Aslan and others a while back and I feel that this is a sound analysis of this otherwise mysteriously stupid phenomenon.

Interesting that sects in the cultural areas that are least educated, most anti-intellectual, and with a diffuse and shifting leadership structure, are those which responded to the rising social acceptance of scientific proofs and reasoning by forcing an ancient collection of many and varied works into a “scientific” historical framework which it cannot sustain without ludicrousness.

The Christian denominations with a more formed hierarchy and a history of academic analysis and philosophical thought are the ones which seem to be able to tolerate the ambiguities of ancient texts far more gracefully.

4

“When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual’s own spiritual experience is lost.”

  • Joseph Campbell

I think Campbell was onto something when he realized that it is when they concentrate on literalism that then a religion is setting itself to become irrelevant, to be relevant religion has to be able to deal with the changes of society and that was more doable when ancient writings were considered to be allegories.

Otherwise the danger remains that things like slavery would never be considered evil or inappropriate.

“Maybe the editor should had put a line though “how to sell your daughter”? Don’ you think one of the popes would had thought that, uuuh you know we are dumping a lot of stuff now, couldn’t we just cross out that slavery thing and pretend it never happened?”
-Eddie Izzard.

5

Yes, contemporary literal interpretations of scripture are relatively new, and they are reactions to intellectual developments in post-Enlightenment Europe. The inerrancy of scripture is a longstanding doctrine but was interpreted differently in different areas. It’s important to recognize the variety and history of Christianity, and to get out of historical mindsets that treat pre-Enlightenment Europe with the same mindless disdain that colonial-era writers used in reference to Africa, Asia and the New World.

It’s baffling to me how Reza Aslan consistently manages to make explanations of even basic points sound like Ron Burgundy explaining the etymology of San Diego.* Also, smh at “Ph.D. in sociology focusing on religion.”

*Credit to Anthony Le Donne for this.

6

I think it was uncommon in organized churches, but still fairly common amongst the non-academic populace. But the populace didn’t really study the Bible, so the implications of literalism didn’t become a problem. Giving the non-academic laity easy access to the Bible led to a robust academic form of literalism, instead of just the hodgepodge of beliefs it was before.

The Protestant Revolution had the Bible the sole foundation for doctrine, one that does not need interpretation is much more palatable. So as literalism became available and relatively robust, churches eagerly adopted it.

Believing the Bible is literally true has been around since it was written. But this modern form of literalism is something different. It definitely cannot predate the Protestant Reformation.

7

Do you have any basis for this other than “I think”?

For most of the history of Christianity, the laity (and even most ordinary clergy) had no access to The Bible - actual texts were rare, and access was restricted - and for much of that time, they would not have been able to read it even if they had (and even if they had been literate), because it was not written in or translated into vernacular languages. Only Church trained, Church approved scholars would have had access, and their interpretations were strongly guided by the views of the ancient Church Fathers, the greatest of whom, St Augustine, had taught that when a Biblical passage was in superficial conflict with reason and (what then passed for) established science, it was the literal interpretation of the Biblical passage that should give way. (Otherwise, he argued, Christianity would be made to look foolish, and old lose adherents as a result.) The religious doctrines that most people were taught (in sermons, and so forth) was not based directly upon the Bible, but on tradition, and on Bible passages as they had been interpreted (and then taught to the ordinary priesthood) by Church-approved, highly educated experts, whose interpretations were often very far from literal.

Bibles in general, and Bibles translated into the vernacular, in particular, began to become widely available to laity and lower clergy alike only after the invention of printing and the Protestant Reformation, but it is well documented, as the OP and other posters in this thread have noted, that Fundamentalism and Biblical Literalism, an insistence that the Bible is the major source of Christian truth, and must be interpreted as literal truth, is a viewpoint that does not take hold until the late 19th or early 20th century, specifically in America, and as a reaction to the liberal, science-friendly Christianity that then prevailed (and that had, by then, embraced Darwinian evolutionary theory as a scientific justification for social change). Fundamentalist Christianity is a movement of reaction against the rapid social change of modern times, that is often associated with the rise of science (hence fundamentalist hostility to science in general, and evolutionary theory in particular). Biblical literalism, rather than being the basic motivation behind the movement, is a tool it uses in its resistance to scientific modernity, and to justify its social conservatism. The movement’s roots in Christian tradition are extremely shallow.

See The Creationists by Ronald Numbers for a history of the movement.

8

A little simplistic. There are loads of Protestants who don’t follow the “literal truth” ideology. My own Lutheran minister has just pointed out in his last two sermons that unless we knew the context of that week’s Gospel reading (one was Jesus speaking to the Pharisees, the second was a passage that a first-century Jew would know was a reference to the story of Daniel) we would probably not understand it at all.

9

As far as I know, what you say in the OP is basically a true statement with some caveats. I could write some lengthy articles on this subject but I don’t have the time at the moment so I will just add a few additional points.

It would not have been possible for very early Christianity to have the modern equivalent of strict fundamentalism because the Bible as we know it had not been assembled yet. Christianity started with Paul and then the now accepted Gospels written decades or much longer after Jesus’ death to reflect what was already being passed around as the the true message among the earliest followers of Christianity.

However, Christianity was very fragmented in its early years with little common canon or consistent reference works. It wasn’t until the First Council of Nicea in 325 AD when the early version of the catholic church (small ‘c’) called together representatives from all Christian sects operating all over the world in order to hammer out central ideas like the nature of the Trinity but also agree to the compilation of works that would be included in the Bible.

There were (and are) many other books that were left out in the process. Some are still known but treated as non-canonical, others have been lost for good, and a couple like the Gospel of Judas have only recently been rediscovered. There are about 52 of these Gnostic Gospels in total.

I am going to skip ahead for the next 1400 years or so. There is plenty of interesting stuff in there but we don’t have the space for it. Various groups ascribed different levels of faith to Bible inerrancy but, in general, the vast majority of them treated it as a collection of myths with an implied message rather than an encyclopedia or almanac. This was also the time when most of the iconic of modern Christianity like angels, demons and even Satan were depicted in art. Good luck lucking those up in the Bible in the ways most commonly depicted though. They don’t exist at least not in that form. That means that their creators were taking very liberal artistic license with their ideas and not basing them on the actual Bible itself.

The idea that the first (of two) creation stories in Genesis was to be taken very literally (days mean Earth days for example) would have been laughable to even the Puritans. The Catholic Church never took that stance either. One good illustration of this is that Thomas Jefferson went to far to cut up a copy of the Bible with a knife and rearranged it so that it actually made sense.

Everything I have read suggests that Christian Fundamentalism didn’t really start in its present form until the late 1800’s and much of it is literally just decades old. There is a market for mega-churches that support such beliefs so it grew just like any effective marketing campaign can in this interconnected age. Surprisingly, the same thing is true for Fundamentalist Islam. It isn’t an ancient tradition either and has followed a very similar growth trajectory.

Check out Iran before the revolution in the late 70’s.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-own-bible-5659505/
Here is an even sadder video if you feel like watching it. It used to be closer to a middle-Eastern San Francisco than to anything we can imagine today.

10

Resa Aslan does the bidding of his master Satan, the Father of Lies, very well.

The truth is that the true Church has ALWAYS believed the inerrancy of the Bible. Dr. Adam Clarke (c. 1762–1832), one of the first Methodists, wrote a massive Commentary on the Bible. In part of it called “An Introduction to the Four Gospels, and to the Acts of the Apostles” he writes this–

He then goes on to quote at length from a Dr. Whitby concerning the various methods of Divine inspiration.

Going back even further, Matthew Henry (1662–1714) also wrote a very influential Commentary. It influenced many well-known preachers for centuries afterward. On II Timothy 3:16, which states, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” Henry writes thusly–

11

The claim that the Bible is a divine revelation and the claim that it is all, or even mostly, to be understood literally, are completely different things. Nearly all Christians (once a canonical Bible was established) believe the first. Rather few have ever believed the second, and most of those who did or do have been 20th and 21st century Americans (though still a minority of American Christians).

Actually, I doubt that even the most rabid of literalists hold that such things as the parables told by Jesus are meant to be understood as literally true stories. As ever, people understand and interpret the Bible in the ways that suit them.

12

Is this that “Trail of Blood” nonsense?

13

What is the ‘true church’ that you are speaking of and when exactly did it start in your view? It is well established that the accepted Gospels were not even written until decades after Jesus’s death and the most primitive version of the Bible that many of us had on our bookshelves was not even possible until well after the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. There were lots of competing sects in early Christianity and the final version came down exactly like you would find on an episode of The Office - vote by committee. Hardly anyone agreed on everything but it was a good enough compromise to make it the standard to this day.

I am nominally Christian myself and I find the history of the religion fascinating but I dispute the idea that there was ever one true Church. I ask again, which exact branch are you referring to because there are multiple claimants for that title to this day.

I also believe it is completely impossible for most so-called fundamentalists to believe what they do because most of the major themes that they say they believe in do not appear in the Bible at all or at least not in the form they are represented. Satan barely appears in the Bible and never in the form depicted in renaissance art. Hell doesn’t either. Angels do appear in the Bible but in a completely different form than popularly depicted.

If fundamentalism was actually strict and serious, you would get a completely different religion from a strict reading of the Bible than any group would be willing to go through. Part of the problem is that the editors added chapter and verse numbers to every part of it which encouraged people to read everything out of context. That is completely modern, artificial and deceptive. Try reading the story of Job some time in its entirety. Almost everyone cuts it off in the middle because the real end is too horrifying but it is almost never presented that way.

For that matter, start with a blank slate, read the Bible as a whole rather than carefully selected passages and see if you come up with the same conclusions that are presented by any current Christian denomination. My personal conclusion is that is an extremely poorly written series of book, even more poorly edited than that and interpreted by people with an agenda even worse still.

Biblical literalism depends on following a very strict ands archaic set of rules, many of which are contradictory. I don’t see how anything can say they can do that with a straight face. If you think you can, I will give you a whole set of them straight out of The Word of God itself for you to follow for the next year. You can report back the results afterwards.

14

(emphasis added)

Right. The historical churches saw the Scriptures as being, when corectly understood, True in their teaching of faith and morals. The important thing was the point being made.

Sure, it’s a fact that for the majority of that time you could get into a world of hurt for saying the Bible was wrong. But that was more because you would be opposing the authority of the Magisterium and the civil order it blessed. Protestantism brought forward the concept of Sola Scriptura, but even *that *was not an absolutist literalism, but rather that The Teaching had to have a basis in Canonical Scripture as written down and fixed, rather than the fashions of philosophy or the vagaries of tradition. They were still perfectly willing to say, oh, “God performed a miracle for Joshua making it look like the sun had stopped, thus freaking out the enemy. The actual planet kept going undisturbed.” or “Six days, six Aeons, hey, the point is God made the Universe, life arose on Earth, then we came along thinking we could know good and evil and things went pear-shaped from there”.

The common folk and even the street-level church tended to accept the Biblical historical or cosmological accounts as “real” in the absence of reliable other information and in the sense that in those circumstances you might as well take the word of an otherwise trusted source to explain something that you have no way to figure out anyway and does not impinge on how your crops grow.

The sort of Biblical literalism we associate with the American Fundamentalists is clearly one that’s reactionary against scientific and social transformation. When the natural and social sciences began saying “you know what, you don’t need God in order to explain how the Universe works, or in order to make a more just and prosperous society, and other moralities and social orders than Western Christian may work just fine” beyond the circles of Academia, they took that as a direct existential threat. Satan himself coming to damn their children to Hell by making them doubt or compromise.

15

Except that religion has problems either way. If it is apparent that religion changes with the times, then the true derivation of religious tenets becomes correspondingly apparent - it becomes clear that religious tenets are made up by people; and people with veiled agendas and without necessarily any strong grounding in empiricism. Religion also becomes shifting sand on which simple people are reluctant to depend.

The result of this sort of wishy washy religion is that simple people move to a solid but stupid religion like fundamentalism, and others come to prefer tenets derived via more transparent and empirical processes, ie they become secular.

Let me go way, way out on a limb and suggest that - out of all the thousands of religions out there - the “true church” is the one to which Flyer belongs.

16

There’s a theory in various fundamentalist Baptist circles that the TRUE CHURCH (which is fundamentalist Baptist, naturally) has always existed since the time of the apostles. This is the Trail of Blood theory I mentioned earlier.

In order to make this historical linkage, the “Trail of Blood” folks have to put a lot of disparate ideologies into their family tree (like Donatism, Catharism, Montanism, etc.)

Since Flyer is telling us that both a Methodist and a Non-Conformist are part of the “TRUE CHURCH,” I suspect he or she is operating with a view along these lines. Apparently, there’s also a Mennonite version of this philosophy as well, but I don’t know that much about it.

It’s all a bunch of nonsense, of course. On a general level, you can of course claim that all Christian movements owe their origins to early forms of Christianity, but trying to retcon a backstory into the Baptist church from a bunch of conflicting ideologies is absurd.

17

The word inerrancy may not mean what you think it does. Consider the contemporary Catholic point of view: [INDENT] Fundamentalists resort to this to guard the infallibility of the Bible. Again they’re fighting a battle against the Modernist, who “demythologizes” and thus dismisses (“dismyths”) any passage that makes him uncomfortable (e.g., those that teach miracles or an absolute moral law).

Catholics agree that Scripture is infallible, or free from error, but not necessarily grammatical, mathematical, or scientific error, only error in its message.

For example, when a biblical poet speaks of “the four corners of the earth” he’s reflecting the common ancient Hebrew belief that the earth is flat; yet his point is not the shape of the earth but the glory of God. [/INDENT] Fundamentalists tie themselves into pretzels when they encounter such passages: some have purportedly denied the curvature of the earth. Catholics draw on very old tradition. During medieval times, priests used a 4 fold interpretive structure when studying scripture. All sentences could be read in 4 ways: literal, allegorical, moral and gnosis. I seem to recall that Augustine drew further distinctions: that’s the simple framework. Here’s a more detailed POV from the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia.

Of course fundamentalism is terrible theology as well. Those who deny nature deny God Himself, aligning themselves with the dark one, suffering, disease. In contrast, Jesus came to earth as a healer. Don’t get me wrong: it is the constitutional right of the Christian fundamentalist to deny God. I recommend other choices however.

18

I’m not going to speak for Flyer, but I think there is a defensible doctrine of the true Church: [INDENT]For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Matthew 18:20 [/INDENT] But that’s an ecumenical interpretation of the true Church, quite the opposite of the fundamentalist version. This interpretation is also a scriptural one.

19

That’s not actually true.

I’ll reference Wiki on this (which has references attached, and which you also linked):

Biblical canon was basically already close to final form at least 100 years prior to the First Council of Nicea. The Muratorian fragment was written by 200 AD. Also Origin of Alexandria and Irenaeus had written of the books that would basically become the New Testament (they were not complete, though). The process wasn’t fully complete until after Nicea.

20

Yeah, somehow in editing I lost the qualifiers. Only some adopted it.

I don’t know what to say to someone who wants a citation from an illiterate populace. But I can point out that what evidence we have in the Bible itself shows people who believe the words to be literally true. It seems unlikely this would have changed. It’s not the literalism we have today, but just a general acceptance that the Bible is historical.