Morals: Rules of Evidence

Law courts (at least in the English tradition) have found it necessary to develop rules of procedure and of evidence over the generations to help ensure a 'fair trial'. So we should expect to need some rules for using the Bible to help ensure accuracy in developing morals from the Bible

Lets see if we can state some basics for understanding the Bible.

I want to start with seven propositions. I will then explain why I think they are both correct and necessary for sound interpretation of the Bible :

1. God, not “the church” or any other human system gave us the Bible.

2. God is beneficent, so the Bible is intended for our good not our harm.

3. God is transcendent, so there are lots of things we could not find out about God unless he revealed them to us and the Bible is his 'authorised' record of this self-revelation.

4. God is super smart, so all the important things will be said so often in so many different ways so that even us dummies can get the message.

5. God is a master of language, so he might use poetry, hyperbole, sarcasm and the whole range of linguistic tools that even ordinary humans use. Thus 'literal' interpretations are obstinate folly.

6. Humans are at best fallible and at the worst lying, conniving, self deceiving, self-centred and nasty. So even the best people will sometimes misinterpret the Bible and the worst will use and abuse it to gain personal advantage. And there will be all stages in between.

7. Humans find being bad much easier and more attractive than being good, so our inner nature will be antagonistic to Bible teaching that tries to correct our faults.

1. God, not “the church” or any other human system gave us the Bible. My fellow believers of a Catholic persuasion will disagree strongly, but hear me out. This doctrine may have sprung up as a reaction to the protestant reformation with its stress on the authority of the Bible, and its use of the Bible to pass judgement on certain practices of the Western Medieval Church. But the book of Hebrews begins:  “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways,  but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” If the Bible records what God spoke, whether by prophets or by his Son, then it comes with his authority and his imprimatur. Whatever role “the Church” played in recognising real from counterfeit claimants for inclusion in the canon of Scripture and preserving and transmitting the scriptures it cannot alter or supplant the divine origin of the Bible.

This proposition is also a necessary one. If the Bible were the product of mere humans, even ones who claim to be “the church” then it could not command universal respect. It certainly could not claim to give us access to the ultimate standard of morals. It is only so far as the Bible is the gift of God to the human race that we can say it gives us access to the ultimate standard – God's own moral character.

2. God is beneficent, so the Bible is intended for our good not our harm. Jesus said  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) The theme of God's beneficence and redemptive purposed for humankind are so prominent in the Bible that I don't think I need to present a case for it! But despite this biblical evidence, people indeed often religious people like the ancient Pharisees have made God out to be a kill-joy. Consequently people commonly think of the Bible as a book of burdensome rules. This is the opposite of the true position! Since God desires us to “have life and have it to the full”; his gift of the Bible to the human race is to help us have that life.

3. God is transcendent, so there are lots of things we could not find out about God unless he revealed them to us and the Bible is his 'authorised' record of this self-revelation. I hope it is self evident that there is a great deal about God that humans would have no way of knowing if God did not take the initiative and make himself known.

Is the Bible God's authorized record of him making his nature and purposes known to humans?

Look at it from the other end. If God cared enough about humans to want to relate to them, he would want them to know what he was like. Rather than “re-invent the wheel” so to speak by starting afresh with every generation and every individual, it would make a lot of sense to get something written down (once there was writing!) to serve all people generation after generation. So coming back to looking from our end, it would make sense to look for some writings that at least claim to be a record of God's revelation to mankind. The Bible does indeed make this claim repeatedly and consistently from beginning to end.

In this line of argument, the question is not “can one prove that the Bible is God's word”, but merely “is its claim to be God's self revelation better than any other body of literature that makes the same claim”. The Bible wins hands down!

More next post

My Adventures with God.: Ch.1

Why?

Why am I writing this? (Apart from: “It seemed like a good idea at the time”) .

I found at many stages of my Christian growth that hearing hearing other people’s experiences was a great help. True many of these were famous, but some were ordinary, nevertheless God had done something in their lives and reading or hearing about it helped my own relationship with God. I found the same thing in prayer groups and churches. Where people shared their experiences (well when they were honest about them) it was a stimulus to Christian growth.

I might be ordinary but God has done things in my life that I think are pretty special. I have had some adventures doing things for and with God that I think are tales worth telling and hearing and I've made some mistakes others could profit by hearing and avoiding. So here goes with the story of my adventures with God.

How It all began.

I can't think of any way to avoid starting at the beginning; it sets the scene for things that follow. But I will try to cover the mundane bits briefly.

A resume might include: David Lindsay Greentree born 4^th April 1949 to Isabel Florence Greentree (nee Cornwell) “home duties” and Ashton Edward Greentree “pharmacist” at the Sydney Adventist Hospital Wahroonga. Grew up in the Sydney suburb of Pymble attended Warrawee State Primary school and Asquith Boys High School.

A spiritual resume should add: Ashton and Isabel were second generation Seventh Day Adventists. Devout Christians but of a more ecumenical outlook than many in that denomination. Ashton served in the Air Force, then as a pharmacist at the Sydney Adventist Hospital but left this to return to the Air Force where he served until he retired. Ashton and Isabel were 'dis-fellowshipped' by the Adventists about the time Ashton returned to the Air Force. They then did not attend church but Ashton was very active in the Officers' Christian Union, and they retained a strong private faith.

How I failed baptism class … twice

How can anyone 'fail' baptism class? Well I'll tell you.

I was brought up on the 'King James' version of the Bible. Even for someone raised on it, the thee's, and thou's and generally archaic language makes it heavy reading. I was about twelve when a new translation into modern English appeared – at that stage only the New Testament but I got one and suddenly found that here was something I could read easily and understand. So I read it.

Although my parents had left the church, I got on my push-bike most Saturday mornings and went to church. Adventists are one of those denominations that do not believe in infant baptism so about the age of thirteen children are sent off to baptism classes. As a keen young believer I joined a class at about that age.

Adventists have some practices that they hold dear. Two of these are strict Sabbath observance – on Saturday not Sunday - and health food. The health food practice generally included vegetarian diet. My family and I suspect many others were not vegetarian in private, but most conformed in public. Adventists also took the Old Testament dietary laws seriously so pork was strictly forbidden. They also had strong views on the interpretation of the books of Daniel and The Revelation, but at that age I did not understand those so they do not feature in this story.

I had been reading the New Testament in modern English. I had seen how time and again Jesus was in conflict with the strict Sabbath-keeping of the religious people of his day. I also noticed that he was against their strict dietary laws, indeed in one speech he declared all foods ritually clean. I think these views must have become apparent in class. Perhaps I asked the wrong kind of questions.

The day for the class to be baptised in church I expected to be among them. Somehow I found myself culled from the group and sitting in church watching the baptism instead of being in it.

Not to be deterred I signed up again the next year for baptism classes. During these classes I got invited back to the Youth Pastor's for Sabbath lunch one time, and then to the Senior Pastor's. The big day for the group baptism arrived. Once again I expected to be in the group but instead found myself in the congregation just watching.

Now another strongly held doctrine of the Adventists was that they were one one true church. The Pope featured in far too many sermons for my liking as the Antichrist, but when I had questioned the senior pastor about Roman Catholics who believed in Christ He just answered with a quote from Revelation: “Come out of her my people”. I think from memory that they were not as hard on the protestant denominations – but they were still the “apostate Churches”. So where was there for a young teenager who believed fervently in Jesus but was rejected by the “true” church?

That was a problem! But my father had found fellowship with many sincere and devout Christians in the Air Force, and my brother was about to marry an Anglican girl, who seemed to me to be a Christian. Also about this time I was active in the Inter School Christian Fellowship and there was no doubting the faith of the students and teachers involved in it. So I went church hunting.

ANNOUNCING ....

A NEW SERIES

The blog series on spiritual advice for new Christians has finished, and has now re-edited and made available as an E-book on Amazon under the title "Colostrum : spirituals antibodies for new Christians".

I am now starting a new series for helping believers grow in their faith.

I found personal testimony of what God had done in people' s lives helped me. So now it is my turn to tell some of the things God has done in my life.

Coming soon: "My Adventures With God"

Ah, but just whose interpretation of the Bible do we believe?

(PS I have just returned from holidays. Although I said I would look at the Ten Commandments next, while I was away I worked out that there are a few more preliminaries I need to work through first!  So here goes...)

This is a serious problem. To re-phrase an old joke: “ask two Biblical scholars what a text means and you will have three opinions!” Matters get even worse with platform speakers and church leaders whose main claim to fame is having strong opinions. Even ordinary people generally have a pre-formed notion of what they would like the Bible to say. All these can and regularly do make the Bible out to say just about whatever they want!

Making the facts say anything we want is not confined to Bible study. For those who entered debating competitions at school you will remember that after the subject was given one often tossed a coin to decide which team would have to try to prove the statement true. The other team then had to prove the statement wrong. It is surprising how many convincing arguments you can invent in favour of a proposition even when you actually believe it is wrong.

All this has led many people to throw their hands up in despair and in effect say “It is simply impossible to be certain about anything”. Of recent decades it has seemed to me that churches have been swamped by clergy who at least in their preaching have said that there are no certainties, even about God. (Of course it is often these same people who have the greatest degree of certainty that their own group's views – from theology to politics – are right.)

On the other hand I have up to this point been making a case that God is our ultimate moral reference, and the Bible his official exposition of his character and purposes. So although I can see the problems I am not advocating that we should give up attempting to use the Bible.

To put it another way: on one hand I am against the idea that every moral problem can be answered and all argument settled by simply quoting a few Bible verses. On the other hand I am against the opposite notion that nothing can be settled from the Bible.

Let me give an example of a possible way forward by looking at how we humans have dealt with a similar conundrum.

Take the criminal law courts. Their role is to convict (and subsequently punish) the guilty and to acquit the innocent. Successfully carrying out this role is close to essential for their society to function. But courts face two problems in reaching a verdict. Getting at the “Truth”; and the effects of making a mistake.

The Truth is out there. Suppose Joe Blow is accused of killing Fred Nerks, either he did kill him or he did not. That is history, it happened how it happened. But this Truth is not generally accessible – the court can't go back in a time machine and watch everything that really happened. They have to weigh the evidence that the two opposing counsel have presented and make their decision.

The other problem the court faces is effects of making a mistake in what they think that truth is.

Punishing wrongdoers is, among other things, a practical necessary in order to maintain any human society, but the society will survive if occasionally wrongdoers escape. However punishing an innocent person is a thing evil in itself so it aught always to be avoided.

How do courts deal with these problems

If courts took the view: “the prosecutor says he did it, the defence says he didn't. We can't go back in time and see for ourselves so we can't decide” our criminal justice system would collapse, and society with it.

The social necessity for punishing wrongdoers is so pressing that we do not throw up our hands and say “It is simply impossible to be certain about anything”. We aim for the best 'certainty' that is in practical terms possible, and work with that. We formulate rules of such things as procedural fairness and of evidence because these have been found to reduce the incidence of wrong verdicts. We allow for the possibility of error by such things as allowing appeals and by giving the accused person “the benefit of the doubt”.

There are several points of similarity between the courts and moral philosophy where the courts point the way forward.

A justice system is essential to human society, so courts make ways to function despite all difficulties. Moral rules just are a fact in any human society. So we need to find ways to make good ones, despite all difficuties.

For moralists there is a truth out there: God's moral character is what it is and in relation to a moral question it does provide the standard by which to judge. But like the courts, deciding what that truth is in relation to a particular question may be hotly contested. We need to accept the idea of having to evaluate the evidence, possibly from several opposing or at least conflicting sources and make our best decision. Like the courts: we do may not have certainty, we just have “beyond reasonable doubt”.

In criminal justice, false positive results are more damaging than false negatives. This may apply t moralists. There is a famous dictum by one Judge Blackwell “I would rather acquit ten guilty murderers than hang one innocent person”. History has many tragic examples of religious zealots causing suffering by their rules. Biblical moralists need to consider that they may err, and make sure that if so, they err on the least deleterious side!

Courts have found it necessary to introduce rules as to how they operate. For instance gossip and rumours are frequently inaccurate, so there is a rule against hearsay evidence being admitted. One side of an argument often sounds right until the other side is heard: so accused persons have to be given a chance to answer the allegations against them. Biblical moralists will also need rules of interpretation to reduce the likelihood of making mistakes. I the next post I hope to say something about this.