THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: SCRIPTURALLY UNENLIGHTENED?

The Rev. David Watt is a priest of the Archdiocese of Perth in Australia. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from Cambridge University (England) and a licentiate in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome.

"Fundamentalism" is a term of reproach among modem Scripture scholars, including those who call themselves Catholic. What is fundamentalism? Fundamentalism seems to mean being too literal when interpreting Scripture. Thus defined, of course, fundamentalism is self-evidently bad, for it is wrong to be "too" anything: That is what "too" means. But if the accusation of fundamentalism is simply asserted, not proved, it is just a way of dismissing an opponent's position without troubling to refute it.

How would you prove someone's reading of Scripture too literal? It would require two steps: first, explaining what the opponent's exegesis is, and, second, explaining why it is too literal.

Does fundamentalism exist? Clearly it does. For instance, to take scriptural references to the "brothers" of Jesus in their literal and fullest sense is to read too literally. Why? Not simply because the biblical term for "brother" can and sometimes does mean "cousin" or "relative," but also because we have other knowledge to bring to bear, namely, the infallible Church teaching that Mary was ever virgin.

What are the kinds of readings that seem fundamentalist to a typical modem Scripture scholar? There are many. If you assert the absolute inerrancy of Scripture, the historicity of any Old Testament miracles, or the historicity of too many New Testament miracles; if you believe that prophecy in Scripture means prediction of future events; or if you accept traditional ideas of the identities of the human authors of the Bible - you may be a fundamentalist.

But don't worry. You are in good company. For on all of the above matters, the Gospels portray Our Lord as a thoroughgoing fundamentalist. Whenever He refers to Scripture, He presupposes its inerrancy. Moreover, He says, "Scripture cannot be broken" Jn. 10:35).

His view of Old Testament miracles, too, is likely to disturb modem scholars. Unfazed by "critical" strictures about the hundreds of years separating the events of the Old Testament from their final written form, Jesus confidently cites the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (including the episode of Lot's wife), the supernatural drought in Elijah's day and his miraculous aid to the widow, Elisha's cure of Naaman, and more. He even refers to Jonah's three days and nights in the belly of the whale. (Had He known what modem scholars claim to know, He might have realized that this entire book is mythical.)

With regard to prophecy, His performance is similar. Our Lord displays no awareness that, as our scholars insist, a prophet was not so much a fore-teller as a forth-teller. Time and again He talks of fulfilling Old Testament prophecies, and speaks of Moses as a prophet who "wrote of Me." He seems even to have coached the two disciples on their way to Emmaus into a corresponding fundamentalism, upbraiding them for not believing Old Testament references to Himself.

Our Lord's record does not improve if we consider His insight into the human authors of the Bible. Nowhere does He evince a "critical" sense with regard to them. He seems to accept traditional views about the sacred literary achievements of Moses, David, and so on, with never a mention of "the Yahwist" or "the Elohist" or even "redactor R."

What to do? We could whittle away some examples of Our Lord's scriptural fundamentalism by calling into question the veracity of the Gospels reporting them. The Resurrection accounts in particular, and John's Gospel in general, are said to consist of history and myth intertwined, so we could knock out the "Scripture cannot be broken" line from John and consign the Emmaus story to the category of invention. But ultimately this method is inadequate. For however many events we deny, all evidence we do have is against Our Lord's having an "enlightened" view of the Bible.

What then remains for the modem Scripture scholar? Our Lord's apparent biblical naivete seems to provoke two different responses. The first response is to admit that Our Lord used Old Testament comparisons but to deny a "fundamentalist" interpretation. For example, when Our Lord mentioned Himself and Jonah, He did not mean that Jonah was in a whale in the sea; He simply used a mythical episode for purposes of comparison.

But this takes up only one facet of Our Lord's "fundamentalism" - and there are many such. Even regarding the facet it tries to explain away, it involves wishful thinking. For it can offer no concrete evidence that Our Lord (or His hearers) had this "critical" or mythical understanding of Scripture. Moreover, the proposed solution does not work even within its all-too-limited domain. It does not work even for literary reasons. Take for instance the statement, "as it was in the days of Sodom, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man." On the solution we are considering, this is like saying, "As it was in the days of the Wizard of Oz, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man." Rhetorically, this falls flat.

The second response is that of those scholars who have a more radical attitude toward Our Lord's apparent limitations. They simply say that (as Joseph Fitzmyer puts it) He was a man of His time. (It's curious that Fitzmyer, in his own views - e.g., that no demons exist - seems unwilling to concede that he is a man of his time.)

I can understand why someone today might think he has a more accurate and enlightened knowledge of Scripture than Christ had in His day. What I cannot understand is why such a person would want to call himself a Christian. For does not the word mean a follower of Christ, rather than one who thinks Christ should follow him? We believe Christ was God. Hence His knowledge of Scripture should be more than sufficient. Even if we believe that Christ was merely a prophet, He would still be inspired beyond our comprehension in His treatment of Scripture. And considering Jesus simply as a man, He had certain advantages over modem scholars for interpreting the Old Testament. His mother tongue was, if not Hebrew, at least Aramaic - a language much closer to Hebrew than the mother tongue of contemporary Scripture scholars. He was steeped in the culture that produced the Old Testament and - most important - He was 2,000 years closer to the events described. Evidently, however, the appeal of "the historical-critical method" is such that it outweighs all these factors.

Scholarly condescension toward our Savior is very ill-advised - indeed, the opposite of enlightened. If the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes, so can a modem scholar. And where they have a purpose, scholars can read so over-literally as to face the charge of fundamentalism - warped fundamentalism, that is.

Take, for example, the Jews demand for Jesus' warrant for whipping the moneychangers out of the temple (Jn. 2:14-22). "Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."' That verse is interpreted symbolically - as referring to His body and not Herod's temple by the Evangelist two verses later. But that does not deter scholars from giving a literal interpretation in which "this temple" means only the building. Dei Verbum declares that "everything asserted by the sacred authors must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit" (# 11). That would include the sacred author's express interpretation of Our Lord's words. A conflicting literal reading shows a most unCatholic fundamentalism.

Then there is Jephthah's lengthy message to the king of the Ammonites in the Book of Judges. Jephthah, recounting how the Lord God dispossessed other peoples and gave Israel possession of their land, says to the king, "Will you not possess what Chemosh, your god, gives you to possess?" (Judg. 11:24). The obvious, traditional, and correct reading of this verse is to take it, not literally, but as a rhetorical piece of persuasive argumentation: If you think that what belongs to Chemosh belongs to you, then you must admit our title also. Yet modem Scripture scholars give an over-literal interpretation of the verse that has Jephthah admitting the existence of other gods than Yahweh, gods with rights parallel to His.

For more bogus literalism, let us consider the many variations in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, on the theme "the dead cannot praise You." Traditionally, these phrases are taken as referring to Hell. This interpretation, besides making good sense in itself, has the advantage of fitting in snugly with the New Testament, where death is often used as an image for Hell or what leads to it. Scripture scholars, however, are free spirits, untrammeled by tradition. Hence they prefer to read such statements literally, as referring not to Hell but just to death. Thus, they interpret Scripture to teach that after death, all alike, good and bad, enter the shadowy state called Sheol. Death is truly the leveler - forever.

If this is truly the Word of God, then give me the Babylonian or Egyptian myths any day. For at least these religions did not teach that every man's state in the afterlife is the same irrespective of his behavior. In fact, I am not aware of any ancient religion teaching this pernicious doctrine. Enlightened modem Scripture scholars are always telling us that this or that aspect of Israel's religion was derived from her neighbors, yet this supposed doctrine could not have been so derived. Might we therefore call it "authentic Yahwism"? We might - if we are willing to subscribe to an overliteral modem reading that entails the destruction of all morality!

These are not by any means the only farfetched fundamentalist interpretations propounded by scholars today, but they are good examples. We may at least conclude that the current broadsides against "fundamentalism" can be answered with the injunction "Physician, heal thyself' - and with the time-tested advice that the only fundamentalism worthy of the name is that of Our Lord and of traditional Catholic biblical interpretation.

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