Kierkegaard on the Bible

[Paradoxum]

Perhaps, but I don't see how you can know that. That strikes me as an empirical question.

Maybe I'm wrong.

It doesn't to me. Actions are what reveal character. If I am going to call someone caring, it's not because they have a desire to be caring, or feel warm fuzzy feelings at humanity, but rather based on how they act. "Caring is as caring does".

I'm looking at this from one particular virtue ethics perspective. We probably don't share that perspective, and so we're looking at the issue differently. I'm guessing that you are looking at the issue more internally or subjectively.

I don't understand how you are using the word 'internally' and 'subjectively' here.

Anyway, wouldn't you agree that someone can act both caring and uncaring, and in different degrees and amounts? That would be my point I suppose.

Those are real heat pictures, or perhaps a compilation of known data. It is about heat. Emotions have an interesting physical presence in the body.

It's interesting to look at.

 

[quatona]

Absent the bible God would still send his inspired ministers to gather and teach his chosen, and the Holy Spirit would still guide the behavior of the church.

Well, I don´t know that this your god exists.

 

[variant]

So you're saying that ethics is moot unless one has a metaethical consideration beforehand?

I am saying that if you never develop that sense of meta-ethical consideration you might as well be reading a grocery list.

Starting by being ethical might get you there, but it can just as easily lead to the rules being substituted for real thought.

I doubt if a God exists, and wanted people to be ethical creatures, that it just wants obedience.

 

[grasping the after wind]

I don't see how this would be impossible. I could simply ask whoever it is what their morality entails.

Would you accept what they told you without reservation?

But I would not let them determine which traits of character are good. I would have my own idea about this, and I could simply watch how someone acts and form a judgment about what their virtues and vices are. I might not have perfect knowledge of this, but so what?

I guess you would not. This seems to me to be a somewhat self righteous stance. You seem to be saying that you are the supreme arbiter of what another is allowed to believe is moral. Not having perfect knowledge in this case seems to me to be a fairly big deal. If you weren't taking the position that you are the moral arbiter it would be a so what thing but you seem to be placing your self in the role of judge .

In that case, they lack the virtue. I suppose that it is not "normal" to be virtuous, if "normal" means commonplace. A virtue is a personal excellence, and as with any other excellence, this is something that is rare.

Do they lack "virtue" ? Do they lack "excellence"? Are they "commonplace"? Or are others simply judgmental , self righteous and perhaps somewhat hypocritical as they may well think they are not common place but virtuous and excellent yet if they were to honestly examine their own motivations might they not find that they act in the same self serving manner as those they condemn.

Yes, certainly. That's fine. I don't think that virtues are necessarily identical in different individuals. There is always an element of personal judgment. Two chess players won't necessarily perform the same chess move in the same situation, but they both might be grand masters.

It is always good to find a point of agreement

I don't believe that knowing right and wrong is beyond our capabilities. Whether or not we should condemn anyone depends on the circumstances. I have no problem with calling a spade a spade, but I wouldn't do so without strong justification. Usually, it becomes apparent with time if someone is filled with vice.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I find nothing about the condition of another person to be simple or apparent. The minute I begin to look down upon another person as "filled with vice" (which I know I will and do and have done) I hope someone places a mirror in front of me that reveals the state of my own corruption.

I haven't said knowing right from wrong is beyond our capabilities. We all know the difference between what is right and wrong. Where we differ is that you think we know this by an objective standard that can be applied to all by all but I think we know this by a subjective standard that can only be applied by us to our own selves in any valid way and even then our own selfish interests will allow us to rationalize a way in which we can convince ourselves that what we know is evil is not really evil after all. As I do not even trust myself to honestly judge the morality of my own actions I will not submit to allowing another to do that for me nor will I attempt to do that for someone else. IMO It is necessary for a stable society for the members of that society to come to a consensus upon what is considered by the bulk of society to be right and wrong ( which is not the same as good and evil) and to judge the legality of actions based upon that consensus.It is not necessary for us to individually judge another individual's moral rectitude. Nor should such a thing be welcome. If I am not perfect I should not expect perfection in others but I am allowed to expect other's to abide by the rules .

 

[grasping the after wind]

I am saying that if you never develop that sense of meta-ethical consideration you might as well be reading a grocery list.

Starting by being ethical might get you there, but it can just as easily lead to the rules being substituted for real thought.

I doubt if a God exists, and wanted people to be ethical creatures, that it just wants obedience.

Your last sentence is surely correct. For those of us that do believe in God, God as cosmic busybody or curmudgeon seems too ridiculous to be worth considering. How could a Being so creative and imaginative as to come up with this universe from scratch, be only primarily concerned with how submissive a small part of it is. Surely it is beyond foolishness to think the whole purpose of creation is some giant ego trip where God is attempting to prove to Himself just how big and powerful He is by intimidating a bunch of small and weak creatures into submitting to Him.

 

[variant]

Your last sentence is surely correct. For those of us that do believe in God, God as cosmic busybody or curmudgeon seems too ridiculous to be worth considering. How could a Being so creative and imaginative as to come up with this universe from scratch, be only primarily concerned with how submissive a small part of it is. Surely it is beyond foolishness to think the whole purpose of creation is some giant ego trip where God is attempting to prove to Himself just how big and powerful He is by intimidating a bunch of small and weak creatures into submitting to Him.

Right, so this is one of the reasons that I don't think God wrote the Bible even if it does exist.

It makes more sense that the Bible is humanity trying to explore the idea of God and the universe on it's own and develop it's own sense of morality.

So, I agree with Kierkegaard, that the Bible is something we should want to transcend as a society.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Would you accept what they told you without reservation?

Unless I saw something in their behavior that contradicted what they were saying about their views, I would take their word for it.

You seem to be saying that you are the supreme arbiter of what another is allowed to believe is moral.

No, I see reality as the supreme arbiter of what is morally good or not. It is possible to be correct or mistaken about virtue. I merely form my own judgments to the best of my ability.

If you weren't taking the position that you are the moral arbiter it would be a so what thing but you seem to be placing your self in the role of judge.

Yes, so? We all have to make judgments about other people simply in order to live with and among them, for instance, to protect ourselves from people who are predatorial or otherwise toxic.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[brightlights]

"Fundamentally a reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope. All that about the Bible has developed a religion of learning and law, a mere distraction.… The Bible Societies, those vapid caricatures of missions, societies which like all companies only work with money and are just as mundanely interested in spreading the Bible as other companies in their enterprises: the Bible Societies have done immeasurable harm. Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible. That is something quite as necessary as preaching against Christianity."​

The Bible societies have done immeasurable harm. I can only see this in two ways: on the one hand, people have used the Bible in tribalist ways to dehumanize or exclude people or cultures they don't like; and on the other, speaking in Kierkegaardian terms, reading the Bible can limit one's conception of God to the aesthetic (seeing from afar) without the needed commitment of faith, which is a day-by-day project involving responding to God via one's conscience (or what Kierkegaard called the "eternal consciousness"). That is, people read the Bible as an excuse for being a Christian -- for actually living lives of faith and love.

What I wonder is what a society of Christians would look like if one day they all woke up and weren't able to read. Would Christ fritter away and die in their lives? Would there be a whole new flavor of faith, perhaps better or worse, than what was there before?

Most of the people of God throughout history were illiterate. The written word of God is not its only form. Without a word from God we are surely lost but we can survive without the ability to read it. So long as there is a preacher or a prophet who communicate his word to us.

 

[bhsmte]

Are you saying that the Bible inherently causes people to be worse off, or that people are by and large misreading it, causing them to be worse people?

I'd say the latter. But only with the tag that the Bible isn't the clearest book in history.

For the most part, people interpret the bible in a way that suits their own psychological needs, which is one of the main reasons there are so many denominations of christianity (far more denominations than any other religion).

If a certain interpretation doesn't suit them, they discard it and find the interpretation that fulfills their own needs. The book is vague, just look at the prophecies themselves and how they have been creatively interpreted by some to make them true.

 

[bhsmte]

The question is how it creates horrible or good people. This is a ridiculously complicated question, but I think that the Bible can be blamed for good or bad insofar as it commands or instructs goodness or badness -- not, take note, the commandments of groups of people in the past (e.g., God supposedly commanding people to commit genocide), but commandments that stand, basically, for the reader of the Bible in his present life.

And I don't think the Bible is bad with this consideration. Nonetheless, it can be pretty vague or ambiguous as to what something means when it's commanded, and many people have misrepresented the Bible through incorrect theology and twisting of certain verses.

And the destructive ideology Kierkegaard is critiquing when he loathes Bible societies is the idea that all you have to to do to be a good Christian is read the Bible, add a little prayer, and you're good to go. This is an instance of instrumentalizing the Bible rather than actually reading the Bible -- because when you do that, you're forced to accept or reject ideas such as "die to yourself" or "love your enemies", or in the deeper Kierkegaardian sense to live a life of faith that transcends ideas and moves into a moment-by-moment relational life with God who gives commandments via the Logos.

If we're going to put it into a process, I think it goes something like this:

A person is born into a Christian society and is forced upon Christian beliefs and rituals, including going to church, where he is told to read his bible, pray a bit, but whatever he does it's all okay, because grace covers everything. Nowhere in this process does he really "own" his belief, given that Christianity is culturally mediated to him; it's handed down to him like any other ritual. This "grace" basically has the meaning that "whatever you do, you'll go to heaven when you die," which crystallizes a type of life that has minimal changes in consideration of Christ: often these changes translate to standing up for the idea of Christianity (i.e., cultural hegemony and tribalism) and speaking slowly and considerately when God is brought up in conversation. It's this broader type of bad theology that K has in mind in condemning Bible societies, and this theology could only be possible if 1) the Bible were unclear enough to allow for an interpretation that works this way, and 2) people were unwilling enough to be actual Christians and look at what the Bible really says.

I don't believe the bible creates bad or good people, it is just a tool to give people excuses to hate on others who disagree with their personal beliefs. If the bible wasn't around, people would find other reasons to hate on others, independently of what the bible says.

 

[Received]

Most of the people of God throughout history were illiterate. The written word of God is not its only form. Without a word from God we are surely lost but we can survive without the ability to read it. So long as there is a preacher or a prophet who communicate his word to us.

Even that is stretching it. I don't think the word is limited to scripture, but rather the Word or Logos transcends scripture but might be contained in scripture as God's previous instances of communication to different audiences. Jesus is realized through scripture, but eternal life transcends scripture (John 5:39,40).

 

[bhsmte]

Even that is stretching it. I don't think the word is limited to scripture, but rather the Word or Logos transcends scripture but might be contained in scripture as God's previous instances of communication to different audiences. Jesus is realized through scripture, but eternal life transcends scripture (John 5:39,40).

What eternal life?

 

[grasping the after wind]

Unless I saw something in their behavior that contradicted what they were saying about their views, I would take their word for it.

No one would meet that criterion unless they had a very nebulous morality amounting to something like" Whatever i do is good and whatever I do not do is not."

No, I see reality as the supreme arbiter of what is morally good or not. It is possible to be correct or mistaken about virtue. I merely form my own judgments to the best of my ability.

Morality is subjective reality is objective. Reality does not have a moral code it just is. Only a reasoning being can be the arbiter of something that only a reasoning being has invented. We all do the best we can to form our judgements but having no real knowledge of what it is to be anyone but ourselves we ought not to pretend to know what motivates others.

Yes, so? We all have to make judgments about other people simply in order to live with and among them, for instance, to protect ourselves from people who are predatorial or otherwise toxic.

eudaimonia,

Mark

We are human, ergo born predators each and every one of us. Morality is our attempt to channel that energy into more benign things.
Show me one human being that isn't both predatorial and toxic at one time or another as well as kind and caring at another time. People do not come in behavioral classes. One group the corrupt ones and that another the pure ones. They are all capable of being both good and evil, caring and self centered. It is proper to judge the actions for what they are but a gross unfairness to judge a person as if that person were no more than a particular action or set of actions that you have personally observed. If one could claim to have seen every action both foul and fair of another person, perhaps one might be justified in labeling such a person as predatorial or toxic but I think it is unwise to do anything more than characterize the actions in that way and regard the person as no better or worse than oneself.

 

[Eudaimonist]

No one would meet that criterion unless they had a very nebulous morality amounting to something like" Whatever i do is good and whatever I do not do is not."

Not in my experience.

Morality is subjective reality is objective.

Morality may be subjective in that it is a mental construct, but the human well-being that justifies moral judgment is objective. Objective well-being is what sets the standard of successful moral action. For me, morality, while subjective in certain ways, carries with it an objective quality or implication. So, virtues can really be virtues and vice can really be vices in a way that is not merely "subjective".

Reality does not have a moral code[...]

I'm not making that claim. I'm saying that reality sets the standard for a trait of character being good or not. Just as I can be correct or mistaken about the shape of the Earth, I can be correct or mistaken about a trait of character being good or not.

Only a reasoning being can be the arbiter of something that only a reasoning being has invented.

I certain do reason about the shape of the Earth, but the Earth has the final say about whether I reasoned correctly or not.

We all do the best we can to form our judgements but having no real knowledge of what it is to be anyone but ourselves we ought not to pretend to know what motivates others.

I don't think that this is nearly as impossible as you make it sound. In any case, reality determines whether or not someone has good character. It doesn't particularly matter if I have correctly discovered what character someone has.

We are human, ergo born predators each and every one of us.

I reject this view of humanity. We can stop our discussion here.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[grasping the after wind]

Not in my experience.



Morality may be subjective in that it is a mental construct, but the human well-being that justifies moral judgment is objective. Objective well-being is what sets the standard of successful moral action. For me, morality, while subjective in certain ways, carries with it an objective quality or implication. So, virtues can really be virtues and vice can really be vices in a way that is not merely "subjective".



I'm not making that claim. I'm saying that reality sets the standard for a trait of character being good or not. Just as I can be correct or mistaken about the shape of the Earth, I can be correct or mistaken about a trait of character being good or not.



I certain do reason about the shape of the Earth, but the Earth has the final say about whether I reasoned correctly or not.



I don't think that this is nearly as impossible as you make it sound. In any case, reality determines whether or not someone has good character. It doesn't particularly matter if I have correctly discovered what character someone has.



I reject this view of humanity. We can stop our discussion here.


eudaimonia,

Mark

It is actually objectively true that humans are predators. This is how we survive as a species by preying on other species. Maybe it is a moral imperative that we do so . if reality informs morality and morality is objective I think it must be a good and moral thing to be a predator as predation leads to human well being. IMO you reject reality but wish to claim reality informs morality. Your position is contradictory.

I am curious why the fact that humans are predators makes you want to cut off all discussion on this topic.

 

[Nooj]

How would they know about "Christ", in the first place?

The Christian community came before the Bible. The Bible was a creation of the Christian community. So how did the early Christians learn about Christ without the Bible?

Some of them may have seen Jesus for themselves, but a lot of them must have heard from other people. Even without a written Bible, stories about Jesus will circulate. That's how the vast majority of Christians before the printing press and widespread literacy learned about Jesus anyway.

 

[Gadarene]

What is a Bible society?

I think something was lost during the Reformation - the increase of supposedly sola scriptura Protestantism meant that Biblical commentary and teaching tradition lost...."canonicity" for want of a better word.

In Judaism the Talmud is given as much reverence as the Tanakh, it seems. I've been attending Quaker meetings for a while, and certainly in Britain at least, they have an accompanying book of commentary that can be amended/added to as necessary, and contains some Biblical commentary.

This sidesteps the tendency of even originally progressive religions from ossifying because it is believed their core texts are a perfect, final, total revelation.

(Not that Catholicism was perfect, by any means, but...)

 

[BrendanMark]

To transpose Scripture, one element in the canonical tradition of the Church, which was to be used with other canonical materials and practices, into the single norm of theological truth, which was to be used on its own as the foundation for argument, was to reconceive the whole scope and character of the complex canonical heritage of the Church.Abraham, William J. – Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology [Oxford 1998 p. 142]

Sola Scriptura, especially in English instead of Greek, has always abandoned essential thoughts, methods and living traditions from Christianity. Perhaps not everything they threw away in their purifying zeal needed to be - or should have been.