The Other Side of Christianity

Phillip Pullman’s take on the Church is unremittingly, unrelentingly negative; so much so that it seems that even for a nonbeliever, such a one-dimensional view would be boring at best. It goes beyond caricature.

This evening I’ll be leading the first of two library book discussions on His Dark Materials. Part of the plan is to give a perspective to balance Pullman’s one-sided view. I certainly wouldn’t say the Church’s record has been unblemished. But Christianity has not been, if I may be permitted an extreme understatement, unremittingly bad for the world.

Closed-Minded?

Pullman’s view is that the Church is dogmatic in the extreme, closed to new thinking. In fact Christian theology and philosophy are rich in discussion and even dispute, though within boundaries. The boundary around orthodox Christianity is set by the authority of Scripture. Questions that can arise within that boundary are immense, and though some Christian traditions over the last few generations have tried to shut down questioning, the overall history of Christianity has been one of exploring for truth.

Now, to this postmodern age this poses a problem, for postmodernism assumes that ship should sail forever without ever landing on a shore. Christian theology, by contrast, assumes that there is knowledge to be gained, and once known, that knowledge can be counted on. That seems closed-minded to some (“Why are you so certain Christ was the Son of God? Can’t you be more open about it?”) To us it just makes sense to recognize that we know what we know. Questions about how we know, and why we think we really do know, certainly ought to be (and typically are) welcome.

Moreover, the Church was the source and fountain of the modern university: first in Bologna, then Oxford, then the Sorbonne Cambridge.

At the scholarly Gates of Vienna blog we read,

“If we understand a university as universitas litterarum , or consider, without the bias of Eurocentrism, the cast of the universitas magistrorum of the thirteenth century in Paris, we are bound to recognise that the university as a seat for free and unrestrained enquiry based on reason, is a European innovation in the history of mankind.”

It is noteworthy that the first medieval European universities were sometimes developed out of monasteries or religious schools. However, here the Greek knowledge was adopted in a far more unfettered manner than it was in the Middle East.

The quote within that quote is from the German-Syrian reformist Bassam Tibi. This entire blog post is fascinating for its recognition of tremendous intellectual progress occurring throughout the Middle Ages. Rodney Stark has written extensively on this (also here). The colleges and universities founded early after European settlement in America were all Christian. The word “university” implies unity and diversity in knowledge, a perspective toward which Trinitarian monotheism has been particularly friendly.

For related reasons, science developed to its full potential only in Christian Europe. This is not mere historical accident. As Alfred North Whitehead first pointed out, and as has been echoed by Jaki, Stark, and many others, Christian theology views God as rational and the universe as an orderly expression of His being. and rumors of religion being at war with science are unfortunate historical distortions, and the story of Galileo in particular has been twisted to support that distortion.

Hating Pleasure?Pullman says “all churches” want to “control, obliterate, destroy every good feeling.” That’s just not so. I’ll let my previous answer on that suffice for here, except I should add this about the Biblical view of sin. The word in the original language has to do with missing the mark; it’s an archery term. It means falling short of matching the perfect character of God. It can be expressed either in attitude or in action. The greatest sin is not sex (sex within marriage is perfectly in accord with God’s plan) but rebellious pride, pushing God out and installing oneself on the control center. His Dark Materials is an outstanding example of that rebellious spirit.

Hateful, Cruel?

Along with that, Pullman presents the Church as power-crazed, killing and destroying to maintain its hold on authority. The truth is that over the centuries, Christians have been the founders of hospitals all over the world; unique not so much in the practice of medicine but in practicing it for the sake of others. (Friends of mine just returned from doing a free vision clinic in a Muslim country. The tradition continues.) Christians responded with aid to the 2004 tsunami victims, far in excess of any other group, even Muslims, and it was Muslims that were most affected by the floods. Christians led the charge for the abolition of the slave trade and even for women’s rights.

That last will raise some eyebrows, consider the condition of women in other cultures. Islam is hardly known for its equal treatment of women. Female circumcision is still practiced in many non-Christian areas of the world. Suttee (ritual suicide on the husband’s funeral pyre) was banned in India through the efforts of Christian missionary William Carey and others like him. Footbinding was practiced in China recently enough that I saw older women with the characteristic tiny, deformed feet, valued by men for sexual reasons, when I visited there in 1983. Of 51 major Women’s Suffrage leaders, 48 came from Christian backgrounds (Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1978), p. 138).

It was a heavily Christian-informed tradition that led to the Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is mentioned once in the trilogy, according to Alan Jacobs, though I don’t remember seeing Him mentioned in there myself. (I did notice something in there about the Iofur, the usurping bear king, wanting to be baptized “as a Christian,” though.) Pullman’s silence on Christianity’s central figure is intriguing. I could speculate on his reasons but I will refrain. Suffice it to say that there is no figure in history as attractive and as good as Jesus Christ.

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8 Responses

  1. Dale says:

    I think Pullman’s view of the church as closed-minded isn’t 100% off base, though I don’t agree that it is as extreme as your description of his view. Mark Noll’s book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” describes a form anti-intellectualism that is popular in modern Christianity.

    In my experience most of the dogmatism in Christianity comes from the masses who get a weekly deliver of “sound-bite Sunday” and have simplified views of various doctrines. There are also many who don’t have the mental capacity to understand the nuances of theology and have to hold simplified views. This is no different than any other community which is rooted in complicated topic, religious or secular. How many people hold staunch views on global economics or the environment who really don’t understand what they are talking about.

    I’ve been fortunate enough to associated with some highly education and very orthodox Christians who understand the difficulty of exegesis and exposition. These people are a joy to talk with because you can float an idea to them without risking a “tsk,tsk that isn’t what you should be thinking” response. They are philosophically minded as well and understand the need explore a topic fully.

    While I don’t agree with Pullman I can understand why this view is popular among a certain crowd.

  2. ordinary seeker says:

    Yes, Dale, exactly. In college I studied the NT with a professor who was able to tell us the history of how certain words and passages were translated and why, how politics effected some of the choices that were made in the translations, what the historical errors and inconsistencies were in the originals, what the long-standing controversies were in the field, and much more I’ve unfortunately forgotten. Being able to discuss the issues in depth, in all their complications, was so much more compelling than the typical Christian fare, and so much less threatening.

  3. Tom Gilson says:

    os, did your professor also mention that this type of historical criticism is highly controversial, and did s/he present any other viewpoints?

  4. ordinary seeker says:

    Tom, I honestly don’t recall the prof mentioning that the *type* of criticism was controversial, although he did often discuss the controversies in regard to translations and interpretations. Please tell me more about why the type of criticism is controversial.

  5. Tom Gilson says:

    Whew–I can’t really go into the whole story of Form Criticism or Higher Criticism now (I assume your professor was working from a basis like that). I’ll summarize: archaeology supports the general historicity of the Bible; Form Criticism and much Higher Criticism makes a question-begging assumption that supernaturalism is false; textual evidence generally supports the theory that we have what was originally written.

    That’s a long topic for another time. I’m no specialist in it, anyway, it’s not my field.

  6. ordinary seeker says:

    Well, I just wanted to know what the basic controversy is about. I found my answer here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_hcri.htm. It seems that more conservative Christians view the Bible as inerrant and therefore have no use for Higher (as opposed to Lower) Biblical criticism. Would you say that that’s an accurate description of what you’re referring to as the controversy? Or did you mean something else?

    When you say that archeology supports the “general” historicity of the Bible, what do you mean?

    You say, “Form Criticism and much Higher Criticism makes a question-begging assumption that supernaturalism is false; textual evidence generally supports the theory that we have what was originally written.” I think you are just wrong about this.

  7. ordinary seeker says:

    Tom, I was disappointed you didn’t follow up on my last comment. I’m very interested in your perspective on this and on the work of the Jesus Seminar.

  8. Tom says:

    I’m sorry, it’s just not high on my agenda now.

    I can say this about the Jesus Seminar: the consensus among NT scholars–conservative, secular and the whole range–is that as scholars, they do a great job of public relations. That came from one of the big newsweeklies, by the way, not from Josh McDowell. But I don’t think I ought to invest time in chasing it down now.