Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Mark Olson has written a response - well, kind of - to my post about slavery and the Bible. It's not really a response so much as it is a sneer in my general direction, and a highly inaccurate one at that. He makes no attempt to actually answer my arguments except for a relatively irrelevant one in my first post that was tangential to the real issue. He begins:

Now I've written about this before, Mr Brayton does not give the same consideration to theology that he does in the other parts of his life. He is ready and willing to chide a person critical of, say, evolutionary science for not "doing his homework". He is often less than charitable spreading scorn on those who haven't studied the ephemera of that field as well as himself. But, when it comes to exegesis and interpretation of Scripture (it seems) he looks for no authority past his own. In this it seems it a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. On those issues he is expert, he calls foul when those transgress and fail to hold up to his standards of expertise. But by the same light, he however is disdainful of giving the same consideration to interpretation of Scripture.

This is both false and completely presumptuous. Does Olson know how much study I've done on exegesis or on this particular question? Of course he doesn't. He also didn't bother to ask me. In fact, he is quite wrong. When I first began to question these things, as a teenage Christian, I didn't just look to my "own authority" (though I frankly don't think anyone has any "authority" in this issue), I spent the better part of a couple years studying, discussing and contemplating it.

In that process, I was given numerous books and articles by my pastors and I spent many hours in discussion with them on the subject. As I got older, the sophistication of those texts increased. I've read the thoughts fo numerous theologians attempting to answer the questions I had and continue to have; I found none of them compelling. Olson seems to assume that since I'm not satisfied with the answer of various theologians on these issues, I must not have read them; indeed, he goes further and even claims that I am "disdainful" of even giving them consideration. That's absurd and, frankly, offensive.

Interpretations against slavery are indirect and not obvious. Well, lots of things are indirect and not obvious...It might be argued that some of the very early teachings (Leviticus "love thy neighbor" and the Jubilee) could be argued would come to fruition in those philosophies (against slavery) that Mr Brayton wishes were more explicit back then. If those arguments are not explicit for a variety of reasons is that such a large fault?

Well yes, it might be argued. The question is whether this argument is compelling and I don't think it is. In fact, I frankly find it silly that one would pick out very vague statements like "love that neighbor" out of the book of Leviticus, ignore the very specific instructions condoning and commanding the buying and selling of slaves, and claim that this was all part of some slow-unfolding plan to bring a higher morality to "fruition" centuries later. And yes, this argument is made by many theologians; the fact that I reject doesn't mean I didn't give it consideration.

In no other case in the Bible that I'm aware of, even on the most mundane of actions, does God bother to take halfway measures to get a moral point across. On even the most minor and irrelevant of things, like wearing different types of fabrics, his commands are simple and bold: do not do it, period. Yet on this extraordinarily important moral question, the Bible is not merely silent, it explicitly condones the institution.

Surely if God can find the time or interest to give us explicit moral condemnations of premarital sex and refusing to impregnate our dead brother's widow, he can find the time or interest to explicitly say "don't own other human beings and treat them as property." But instead, the Bible explicitly declares that slaves are one's property to be handed down to one's children, and it doesn't even say that you can't beat them severely (as long as you don't kill them immediately, according to Exodus 21, you can beat them to your heart's content).

To take two statements, both allegedly from God, out of the very same text - one saying "love your neighbors" and another saying "slaves are your property, so as long as you don't kill them you can beat them severely" - and pretend that it's the first statement that he really, really meant and hoped would hold sway, simply is not credible to me. There is a conflict here, and it's a genuine conflict; such shallow and silly rationalizations do not make it go away.

After quoting my statement, restated above, that it makes no sense that God would pass on commandments on so many mundane issues but fail to tell us that slavery is wrong, he writes:

It makes no sense to whom? Mr Brayton? If differential geometry makes no sense to one student does that mean it makes no sense to anyone? Must sense come without effort? How much effort has Mr Brayton put into making sense of it one wonders?

Well yes, it makes no sense to me. And since I'm the one speaking for myself, who else is it supposed to make sense to? The fact that other people may think that there are convincing ways to justify this fact doesn't mean that I either do or should. And in fact, I put a good deal of effort into making sense of it. I spent two years as a young man, as I mentioned above, discussing it, reading about it, contemplating it, and even praying about it. I was a Christian at the time and I certainly didn't want to conclude that the beliefs I held dear were wrong. I looked for every option, but it ultimately came down to intellectual honesty - I couldn't continue to believe something that simply didn't make sense to me.

This last argument is always heard in such exchanges in one form or another. It usually is expressed as "Who are you to question God?" But this presumes that the Biblical conception of God is axiomatic between us and it's not. I am not questioning God, I'm questioning the validity of the Biblical conception of God. The folly of this argument would be quickly demonstrated by considering a conversation where Mr. Olson is discussing Hinduism with a Hindu. If he pointed out ideas and elements in the Hindu texts that he thinks don't make sense, the Hindu might just as easily respond, "Who are you to question Vishnu?" and thereby dismiss any logical objections as casually as so many Christians do with their similar question. I suspect he would find such an argument laughable if it was made by an adherent of any other religion.

In short, Olson really has two responses here - "who are you to say that this doesn't make sense?" and "since you aren't convinced by those theologians who try to justify this, you must refuse to even consider them". He spends no time actually providing an answer to my objections and arguments. If he has a means of justifying the things I've pointed out and he wants to offer them for consideration, I'll be happy to consider them.