Scott Gordon Attacks Tyler Livingston Over CES Letter

[Gadianton]

Exactly why any particular text might deserve that kind of extra respect, that's another question. I don't see how any book could deserve that kind of status just by default—though if you grow up with a Scripture, you probably do give it that status just by default.

I'll let the Reverend defend his statement that scripture is a Christian invention. Assuming he's right, however, we can imagine the selection process outside of the context of the word "scripture", as making these selections is really the invention of the Jewish tradition. I'd like to see how the Reverend explains the difference between the Jewish method and the Christian method that results in "scripture" for Christians but not Jews.

His remark guided my mind to the idea of sola scriptura, however, which is more familiar to me.

The idea that something must be true, just because a particular book says it is, is bizarre to me. On the other hand it isn't just stupid to attribute authority to a source. Sometimes it's smart to decide that some particular person is worth trusting on some topic; even if you don't trust them enough to just believe them

I'll lay it out with maximum cynicism. As I understand it, the Catholic Church has three sources of truth; scripture, the Pope, and tradition. Sola scriptura is a grift. The idea is that we don't need the Church and its experts, we just need the pure word of God -- scripture. In principle, the reformation means every believer can sup from the word directly without priestly intervention. And now that there's a printing press, it's practical for believers to hold the word of God in their own hands and read it for themselves.

It's as bad as a flat earth channel on YouTube. Pseudoscience gets some mileage out of Richard Feynman's remark that "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." It may be true that in principle I can conduct my own experiments in my garage or I can read the Bible for myself, but unlikely I'll produce much of anything original. Pseudoscientists are legendary for telling their audience to "think for themselves" because it makes them sound non-dogmatic and open to criticism unlike the "establishment", and who is less qualified to make determinations about fundamental physics than their audience? It's a good sales line to win converts.

And so I don't disagree with you that we can have authoritative books like the books of Moses and Paul's epistles. My point is there's no tractable message, especially for the lay person, and that is entirely at odds with the premise of the reformation. In reality, the reformation was a grift to get people to ditch one set of authorities for another set of authorities.

[huckelberry]

Exactly why any particular text might deserve that kind of extra respect, that's another question. I don't see how any book could deserve that kind of status just by default—though if you grow up with a Scripture, you probably do give it that status just by default.

I'll let the Reverend defend his statement that scripture is a Christian invention. Assuming he's right, however, we can imagine the selection process outside of the context of the word "scripture", as making these selections is really the invention of the Jewish tradition. I'd like to see how the Reverend explains the difference between the Jewish method and the Christian method that results in "scripture" for Christians but not Jews.

His remark guided my mind to the idea of sola scriptura, however, which is more familiar to me.

The idea that something must be true, just because a particular book says it is, is bizarre to me. On the other hand it isn't just stupid to attribute authority to a source. Sometimes it's smart to decide that some particular person is worth trusting on some topic; even if you don't trust them enough to just believe them

I'll lay it out with maximum cynicism. As I understand it, the Catholic Church has three sources of truth; scripture, the Pope, and tradition. Sola scriptura is a grift. The idea is that we don't need the Church and its experts, we just need the pure word of God -- scripture. In principle, the reformation means every believer can sup from the word directly without priestly intervention. And now that there's a printing press, it's practical for believers to hold the word of God in their own hands and read it for themselves.

It's as bad as a flat earth channel on YouTube. Pseudoscience gets some mileage out of Richard Feynman's remark that "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." It may be true that in principle I can conduct my own experiments in my garage or I can read the Bible for myself, but unlikely I'll produce much of anything original. Pseudoscientists are legendary for telling their audience to "think for themselves" because it makes them sound non-dogmatic and open to criticism unlike the "establishment", and who is less qualified to make determinations about fundamental physics than their audience? It's a good sales line to win converts.

And so I don't disagree with you that we can have authoritative books like the books of Moses and Paul's epistles. My point is there's no tractable message, especially for the lay person, and that is entirely at odds with the premise of the reformation. In reality, the reformation was a grift to get people to ditch one set of authorities for another set of authorities.

Gadianton, I may be getting some of your point here but there are a couple of things that strike me as off. I hope I am at furthering the thoughts here and not just being picky.

I was puzzled by your statement bit earlier about not being able to get Christianity out of the Bible. I found myself thinking the New Testament is pretty clear about Christian basics. Perhaps cultural expectations make it harder to see. You actually mentioned Old Testament and of course you cannot find Christianity in the Old Testament, it was written before Christianity happened. Some of the connection should be obvious and some people have puzzled over. Perhaps you meant church organizational structure and traditions of worship and observance. Yes clearly those developed later.

Oddly I think you mischaracterize the reformation. Church and authoritative teachers, priest pastors are important parts of the reformation. It certainly was not everybody interpret for themselves. You may see some Americans think closer to that but churches still have leaders who study get degrees, know tradition and teach about interpreting the Bible every Sunday or more often.

Jewish folks have a much wider variety of authoritative texts as if scripture had multiple layers. Christians have all decided on a sort of single in or out of the category. That I imagine would be what saying Christians invented the category scripture would mean. I think the Jewish version better but nobody is going to follow me on that. I think first Clement would be better included in the New Testament than second Peter.

P.S., I checked google and the simplest statement of RC authorities is scripture tradition and magisterium. That last refers to the entire body of thinking experiencing writing and conversing Catholic teachers, authorities.

It really is the same sources as Protestants consider, just balanced and organized a little differently.

[Gadianton]

Huck,

I was puzzled by your statement bit earlier about not being able to get Christianity out of the Bible. I found myself thinking the New Testament is pretty clear about Christian basics

Lots of presuppositions in that statement. There could be a big debate about what constitutes "the Bible", but what I'm imagining, are the books of the Bible translated into the persons language. Even that lends an awful lot to skew the message, but I'm imagining 66 translated books with no footnotes or commentary. That means, for starters, there is no "new testament" or "old testament". Just 66 books. That means, the subject not only doesn't know the word "Christianity", which gives a huge clue that Christ is the main character, but has no other hints like "new" and "old" where "new" may be assumed more relevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scri ... he%20Bible.

I may have a narrow conception of what sola Scriptura means, but my experience seems pretty close to this interpretation:

Some evangelical and Baptist denominations state the doctrine of sola scriptura more strongly: Scripture is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter ("Scripture interprets Scripture"), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine.[2]

Even when narrowing down the reading list to proof texts, I don't think it's clear what the message is.

I recall on my mission I became friends with some Christians from the local mega-church. They were not the Philistines the mega-church Christians in my present neighborhood are. One day we were chilling at the apartment of one of the girls from the Church. She was a professor at the local university were she taught Hebrew and Greek. One of these brilliant cluster A types. She had a stack of books on her counter and I asked about them, and so she changed the subject from her nutty encounters with the Lord to her work. I'd mentioned something about how difficult it must be to get through some of the Old Testament and she turned it around and went off about how incomprehensible Paul was.

I was pretty surprised given the foundation of mega-church faith boils down to a handful of passages from Paul. I didn't say anything, I mean, I would have got my ass handed to me in a debate.

Anyway, I won't even cede the proof-texts are as clear as advertised, but narrowing down 66 books to those proof-texts with no context I would see as highly unlikely for anyone, not to mention the average reader.

It certainly was not everybody interpret for themselves.

Now I agree with this. But only as a point in principle, because the point is that the scriptures are so clear that they are their own interpretation. That's what you really need to believe in order for "sola scriptura" mean much. In practice, of course, everyone is pointing to everyone else saying that alternative readings from their own are private interpretations. But in principle, those who accept the strongest version of sola scriptura also strongly reject interpreting for themselves.

[huckelberry]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scri ... he%20Bible.

I may have a narrow conception of what sola Scriptura means, but my experience seems pretty close to this interpretation:

Some evangelical and Baptist denominations state the doctrine of sola scriptura more strongly: Scripture is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter ("Scripture interprets Scripture"), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine.[2]

Even when narrowing down the reading list to proof texts, I don't think it's clear what the message is.

I recall on my mission I became friends with some Christians from the local mega-church. They were not the Philistines the mega-church Christians in my present neighborhood are. One day we were chilling at the apartment of one of the girls from the Church. She was a professor at the local university were she taught Hebrew and Greek. One of these brilliant cluster A types. She had a stack of books on her counter and I asked about them, and so she changed the subject from her nutty encounters with the Lord to her work. I'd mentioned something about how difficult it must be to get through some of the Old Testament and she turned it around and went off about how incomprehensible Paul was.

I was pretty surprised given the foundation of mega-church faith boils down to a handful of passages from Paul. I didn't say anything, I mean, I would have got my ass handed to me in a debate.

Anyway, I won't even cede the proof-texts are as clear as advertised, but narrowing down 66 books to those proof-texts with no context I would see as highly unlikely for anyone, not to mention the average reader.

Gadianton, thank you for the reply, I think I can understand what you are saying better now and see some valid points you make. I guess I experience some curiosity as you have experience in detail discussing with truly conservative folks that in truth are foreign to me. Your reactions open a bit of window for me. Well I am not completely ignorant of fundamentalist views. I have read enough to have an idea where they are located, sort of like that area on the map I have not actually been in.

Your google link article goes on about Lutheranism in vein surprisingly conservative to me. I checked footnotes and find Concordia publishing. This is Missouri synod, the most conservative branch of Lutheranism in America.

I could illustrate by thinking of Paul, your example of incomprehensible. I am sure if you want to get things down to a set of clear final doctrines that answer the questions Paul is impossible. He just does not provide that. However I like Paul a lot but I do not expect anything like that from him. Instead I hear an experimental thinker who does not have all the answers but is exploring new possibilities. His arguments do not all align or coalesce into an answer because there is an experimental quality. Paul suggests possibilities that will grow in time. Pretty much the opposite of those narrow sola scriptura ideas.

[Physics Guy]

Some evangelical denominations really do seem to teach that the Bible consistently interprets itself, to the point where you could give it to someone who was starting from a blank slate, and give them nothing else with it, and they would reliably deduce from the Bible alone the exact doctrine of this particular denomination. That strikes me as ridiculous. The Bible seems to me like a big, floppy mass of ideas that can be flipped and flopped and rotated into many different configurations, depending on which parts one interprets as clear and basic, and which ones one treats as hard sayings that assume narrow contexts. We may soon be able to test whether the extreme sola Scriptura position is as ridiculous as I think it is, by letting an A.I. loose on the Bible and seeing what it concludes.

That'll probably be quite hard to do properly, though, because Large Language Model AIs are trained on large samples of naturally generated human texts, and it's going to be hard to form a training sample that is entirely free from all preconceptions about what the Bible is supposed to mean—even from ones that only show up as faint associations. Maybe an A.I. could do a decent enough job of creating a preconception-free sample to train the next A.I., that would then read the Bible.

Anyway, the vast majority of Christian thinking has never taken that extreme view of how Scripture works. Everyone agrees that the Bible has some kind of authority, but almost everyone has acknowledged that the Bible has to be supplemented with some kind of interpretive authority. What varies is whether that authority is supposed to rest in the magisterium of bishops in communion with the successors of Peter, or in the collective ulema of pastors, or in the individually heard voice of the Holy Ghost.

I completely agree that the Reformation teaching about scriptural authority was absolutely a power grab, and that the power was grabbed by duly appointed protestant clergy, not by individual Christians reading their Bibles alone. That's not a cynical view, though. I think it's exactly what the early Protestants said they were doing, explicitly. It was in the label on the tin, and it was the main selling point.

The idea that Protestantism was this individualist, libertarian movement is a later distortion of history, I'm pretty sure. If you grabbed some early Lutherans or Calvinists, and asked them whether they really believed that anyone could just read the Bible and decide for themselves what it meant without having to listen to any officially appointed interpreters, then I don't think that they would just have sheepishly shrugged and admitted that it wasn't actually quite as good as that. I think they would have recoiled in horror and outrage that anyone would mistake their beliefs for such absurd anarchism.

I have to admit, though, that my Reformation history is rusty, and my impressions may have been biased by hanging out with modern conservative Lutherans in recent years. Perhaps someone can correct me.

[huckelberry]

Some evangelical denominations really do seem to teach that the Bible consistently interprets itself, to the point where you could give it to someone who was starting from a blank slate, and give them nothing else with it, and they would reliably deduce from the Bible alone the exact doctrine of this particular denomination. That strikes me as ridiculous. The Bible seems to me like a big, floppy mass of ideas that can be flipped and flopped and rotated into many different configurations, depending on which parts one interprets as clear and basic, and which ones one treats as hard sayings that assume narrow contexts. We may soon be able to test whether the extreme sola Scriptura position is as ridiculous as I think it is, by letting an A.I. loose on the Bible and seeing what it concludes.

That'll probably be quite hard to do properly, though, because Large Language Model AIs are trained on large samples of naturally generated human texts, and it's going to be hard to form a training sample that is entirely free from all preconceptions about what the Bible is supposed to mean—even from ones that only show up as faint associations. Maybe an A.I. could do a decent enough job of creating a preconception-free sample to train the next A.I., that would then read the Bible.

Anyway, the vast majority of Christian thinking has never taken that extreme view of how Scripture works. Everyone agrees that the Bible has some kind of authority, but almost everyone has acknowledged that the Bible has to be supplemented with some kind of interpretive authority. What varies is whether that authority is supposed to rest in the magisterium of bishops in communion with the successors of Peter, or in the collective ulema of pastors, or in the individually heard voice of the Holy Ghost.

I completely agree that the Reformation teaching about scriptural authority was absolutely a power grab, and that the power was grabbed by duly appointed protestant clergy, not by individual Christians reading their Bibles alone. That's not a cynical view, though. I think it's exactly what the early Protestants said they were doing, explicitly. It was in the label on the tin, and it was the main selling point.

The idea that Protestantism was this individualist, libertarian movement is a later distortion of history, I'm pretty sure. If you grabbed some early Lutherans or Calvinists, and asked them whether they really believed that anyone could just read the Bible and decide for themselves what it meant without having to listen to any officially appointed interpreters, then I don't think that they would just have sheepishly shrugged and admitted that it wasn't actually quite as good as that. I think they would have recoiled in horror and outrage that anyone would mistake their beliefs for such absurd anarchism.

I have to admit, though, that my Reformation history is rusty, and my impressions may have been biased by hanging out with modern conservative Lutherans in recent years. Perhaps someone can correct me.

Physics Guy, your comments here make a good deal of sense to me. I think your characterization of early Lutheran or Calvinist thinking certainly fits what I have read in the past. I have a touch of curiosity about how conservative current German Lutherans would be. In my mind for America conservative means hold hard to inerrancy of all the Bible interpreted as literally as possible, young earth creation, etc. But thought spreads over a pretty wide spectrum not a simple divide liberal conservative.

I found myself thinking of anabaptist and radical reformation movements at the time of reformation. Lot of detail someone might know. I find myself with a memory that there was lots of variety, troublsome extremes, violence. and violent repression recommended by Luther. I checked google to refresh and found myself noticing how much (certainly not all) overlapped with the variety of current American EV movements. Millennial, end of the world coming, restorationist movements, prophecies, etc. (everything from level headed thoughtfulness to babbling lunacy).

[Physics Guy]

Current German Lutherans are mostly not very conservative at all by American standards. Even the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church, which does not get its donations handled by the government as voluntary taxes the way the "state" churches do, is comparatively liberal.

When we first came here, though, we didn't speak German, and so we wanted to worship in English. There were more chances to do that than one might think, because we're not far from some big American military bases, but an American Lutheran congregation was the one that seemed least crazy to us. Maybe we just had bad luck with the others, but it seemed to be a common feature that turned up right away, on the first visit, that they were not going to be communities for a female professor.

My wife was not enthused about the scrapbooking group at one place, for which the main selling point offered was that "it keeps our hands busy so we don't gossip." In another place, the long sermon item about how much God needs uneducated males as leaders didn't actually say that women with PhDs could just sit down and hold still, but it was literally making out masculinity itself to be a criterion for leadership.

It was a jungle out there.

The American Lutheran congregation we found was pretty German at first, because it had an expatriate American pastor who was also pastoring a larger German congregation. After he moved away, though, it turned out that the church had always officially been part of the Missouri Synod, which is a pretty conservative denomination. They're big on Luther, all right, but they seemed to present the Reformation as sort of a boardroom coup in which the Pope was replaced as CEO but corporate culture went on pretty much as it was. And they seemed to think of that as a good thing.

[huckelberry]

Current German Lutherans are mostly not very conservative at all by American standards. Even the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church, which does not get its donations handled by the government as voluntary taxes the way the "state" churches do, is comparatively liberal.

When we first came here, though, we didn't speak German, and so we wanted to worship in English. There were more chances to do that than one might think, because we're not far from some big American military bases, but an American Lutheran congregation was the one that seemed least crazy to us. Maybe we just had bad luck with the others, but it seemed to be a common feature that turned up right away, on the first visit, that they were not going to be communities for a female professor.

My wife was not enthused about the scrapbooking group at one place, for which the main selling point offered was that "it keeps our hands busy so we don't gossip." In another place, the long sermon item about how much God needs uneducated males as leaders didn't actually say that women with PhDs could just sit down and hold still, but it was literally making out masculinity itself to be a criterion for leadership.

It was a jungle out there.

The American Lutheran congregation we found was pretty German at first, because it had an expatriate American pastor who was also pastoring a larger German congregation. After he moved away, though, it turned out that the church had always officially been part of the Missouri Synod, which is a pretty conservative denomination. They're big on Luther, all right, but they seemed to present the Reformation as sort of a boardroom coup in which the Pope was replaced as CEO but corporate culture went on pretty much as it was. And they seemed to think of that as a good thing.

Physics Guy, I have been feeling in recent years that it is a jungle out there back here in the USA. I hope you found a better fit than those groups you mention which sound very conservative. That leaves me puzzling about your comment about the German Lutherans being relatively liberal. Perhaps you are saying that the Americans and other English speakers import conservative expectations.

It might be noted that in America Liberal Christian might have different versions. I find my thoughts in an area believing basic Christian ideas but thinking them open to various understandings. I see scripture as lead by inspiration but also the product of human limited knowledge and understanding so not inerrant. I would be rather conservative from the vantage of some liberal views.

It appears to me that despite growing knowledge about scriptural ambiguities and fictional dimensions the social pressure has been toward conservative beliefs.

[Kishkumen]

Dean Robbers,

I distinguish between sacred text, which is a broader category arguably, and scriptures, which is definitely a term modeled on Christian views of the Bible as “scripture.” One of the biggest tells to me is the publication of the Nag Hammadi literature under the title “Gnostic scriptures.”

[Everybody Wang Chung]

It looks like FAIR has taken down Tyler's bio, but they still have Tyler's articles on their site. Strange.

Does anyone know what Tyler is doing now?