The Heretic’s Bible

April 10, 1988
Lakeland

May 1988
Tarpon Springs

The plural form is the heresy. “Heresy” is from the Greek, “to choose for oneself.” In religion, heresy is being opposed to the dogmas and doctrines of the prevailing religious establishments. Fundamentalist and most orthodox Christian churches are provincial in attitudes toward their sacred scripture, the Bible. Many, if not most, Christians would accuse religious liberals of being negative, as well as heretical, because we do not teach that the Bible is uniquely revealed and sacred, as no other document is sacred. The reality is that Unitarian Universalists are positive in our plural teaching that the religious books of all people are to be respected and admired as the products of their hopes and fears as they have wrestled to interpret the experiences of living with satisfactory meaning.

The plural form is the heresy, because so many proponents of sectarian religious bodies insist that there is only one Bible, divinely revealed. The plain truth is that there are many bibles. Not only Christianity, but each of the world’s great religions treasures sacred writings. When Unitarian Universalists assert that the various religions have equal right to claim holiness for their respective scriptures, we are saying that no one scripture is uniquely the word of God or the only record of his/her will (if one holds that God is revealed that way). If a religious group stakes its claim for authority on the special and closed revelation of only one Bible, then, of course, the liberal religious attitude threatens that unique position. Consequently when we uphold all the world’s scriptures as a library of information, inspiration, reformation, and consolation, the reaction from Bible worshipers is usually hostile and self-righteous.

Orthodox Christians are not the only religious who believe they possess the revealed word of God. It is illuminating to note that not only do some historians (H. J. Muller, e.g.) think the Koran of Islam has had more influence on history than any other single book, including the Christian Bible, but also Moslems believe the Koran is much more literally the holy, revealed word of Allah than the Christian Bible or any other scripture. More than being inspired, the orthodox Moslem believes the Koran was a directly transmitted revelation from God to Mohammed, divine in every word. The religious liberal in our country is only somewhat handicapped if he/she is running for public office. In Moslem countries, it is political suicide to concede publicly that the Koran is Mohammed’s word rather than Allah’s.

While orthodox Christianity has seldom relented from a rigid, Bible-centered viewpoint, any study of the long centuries of Christian thought discloses that philosophers and theologians have relied as much on Plato and Aristotle as on the Old and New Testaments. Notwithstanding this reliance on pre-Christian Greek philosophy, the orthodox Christian would be affronted if he were asked to consider Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as sources of the “word of God.” Nevertheless, the influence of Greek inquiry, logic, and wisdom helped shape the mold for the structure of Christian theology.

A similar parallel could be drawn more obviously in the case of the Hebrew and Jewish scriptures. Christian theologians and dogmatists, with the petty proclamation that the great faith of the Children of Israel was only a forerunner to the only “true” religion, Christianity, ... appropriated and called their own the great Jewish library of law, prophecy, myth, legend, poetry, wisdom and fiction. Oversimplified, perhaps, that was, and is, theological plagiarism.

Thus, although the fundamentalist Moslem and the fundamentalist Christian may insist that there is only one scripture, the acceptance of idea of plural sculpture is the only persuasive stance when one considers not only the contradictory claims, but also the inevitable way the world’s scriptures have influenced and modified each other. The old scripture of the Hebrews was contributed to and influenced by pre-historic, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, and Greek religions, at least. The later Christian faith bore not only these marks, but also the imprint of Roman institutions and Greek and Asiatic mystery cults. The Koran was obviously and admittedly based on the patriarchal religion of the Hebrews.

This influence and inter-play between religions are literary, historical, and religious knowledge commonly shared by most scholars and many persons. It causes aggressive responses only from among those zealots who still harangue us on an alleged unique, supernatural revelation supposed to have occurred only in the little land of ancient Palestine. To concede any universality of sacred writing, no matter how apparent, might shake the unmoving platform on which the fundamentalist stands. Erasmus, the Reformation monk, who had few illusions about organized orthodoxy, commented once, “By identifying learning with heresy, you can make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”

From my point of view, the grimy sexual escapades of a few scalawag evangelists, repulsive as they seem to be, are not as reprehensible as waving the Bible as a threat or lure in order to obtain vast sums of money to build dubious financial empires. As Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher (and a religious man) wrote, “If books were to be judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?”

Although most fundamentalists are Protestant, the true meaning of “Protestantism” is not synonymous with ignorance. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, a professor at more than one seminary, wrote, “We have been told many times that the word “protestant” means not ‘being against something,’such as pope or parochial school; rather, ‘pro-testari’ means to testify on behalf of something, to assert positive convictions.” (PATTERNS OF FAITH IN AMERICA TODAY).

The positive teaching of Unitarian Universalism (our pro-testari) is that when people possess the art of writing, their religious aspirations are recorded, sifted, modified and edited over centuries of time. These bodies of religious writing, when they contain both the nitty-gritty of everyday experience and noble aspirations of a culture, deserve the description “sacred literature.”

Some early peoples have no sacred literature because they never developed a written language. Their religious lore was passed down by oral traditions, seasonal celebrations, and tribal living patterns. But when the power of communicating is strengthened by the art of writing, persons begin to create a continuous religious tradition of song, poem, ordinance, prophecy, history and letters between persons. The Aryans of ancient India, the Chinese of pre-Christian centuries, the followers of Buddha, the Zoroastrians, the Jews, the Moslems – all in their differing climes and times reacted to the procession of the seasons, knew the joys of human love, worried about the tensions of group living, experienced the comfort and security of the bountiful meal at harvest, wailed at death and shouted gleefully when celebrating marriage and birth. These experiences and emotions, common to all members of the human family, then and now, are the human basis for the world’s sacred scriptures. This is the universal record.

Jews and Christians respond most readily to their own scriptures – for them, matchless. The inspirational qualities were born in human experience. Somber, thoughtful Jeremiah saw the need of his people and the perils when they made foolish political choices. Isaiah had a powerful, personal religious experience, and it has been preserved. The Maccabees fought passionately for freedom and religious ideals, and their record stands. Paul not only kept the faith, he wrote it – and through him we can have some sense of the thrilling experiences of the primitive Christian movement. Other peoples have their religious literature, too, with similar impact on their succeeding generations.

The basic religious experiences are interpreted differently, not only within Western culture itself, but also within the the numerous denominations and sects. All the world over, varying conditions of culture and climate produce dissimilar emphases. Because India is a land of intense, prolonged heat, the higher religions of India are contemplative. In temperate zones where everything is hustling, religion, too, is active and energetic. Theological interpretations are partial captives, at least, of climate and culture. We will be kinder in our understanding when we recognize the many conditions which lead toward interpretations of the inner and social experience we call “religious.” It was said of a Christian missionary to the Eskimos that he had a little difficulty in communicating Christian theology because these people of the arctic zone had no word for “lamb.” How could he explain about the “Lamb of God?” He changed the term and preached about the “Baby Seal of God.”

Just because we are different does not mean we are better. Our scripture may be more precious to us than the Vedas, the Koran, the Analects, or the Tripitaka. On the same premise, the Vedas mean more to the Hindu, the Koran to the Moslem, the Analects to the Confucianist, and the Tripitaka to the Buddhist.

One of the ways to increase understanding is to recognize the universality of religious feeling, and to attempt at least a minimum recognition of the value and beauty of all the bibles of the world. In all cases, including the Jewish and Christian scriptures, one must wade through dull antiquities and irrelevant collections, such as Leviticus and part of Numbers, for example. But in every scripture there are treasures and essences of noble thought, lovely language, and uplifting examples for all persons in all times.

All the world needs the Jewish emphasis in Torah which provides men and women the goal of individual responsibility along with loyalty to a decent, fair method of human conduct for the group. All the world needs the gentle universality of Hindu scriptures. In the epic of Mahabharata, the charioteer who is the incarnation of Krishna, the god, says to the ranks drawn up in battle lines, “By whatever path you come to me, I shall welcome you, for all paths are mine.”

But in order to experience the mingling influences, we must read and appreciate. It is said that in the sixteenth century, when Francis I was persecuting Protestants in France, the noted Reformation scholar Beza of Geneva wrote a masterful letter to Francis, courteously but forcibly explaining why the monarch should not persist in the persecutions. Beza is said to have remarked sadly, the letter “could not have failed to win over Francis I, if only he had read it.” So with the bibles of the world, all of them, they will have no winning qualities if we fail to read them.

A reach for understanding does not mean that we will settle into a condition which leaves us with no convictions other than the book we happen to be reading at the moment. Sri Radhakrishnan, one-time Vice-President of India, expressed a more reasonable attitude, “I do not want my house be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” (EAST AND WEST, p. 45)

One thing more, for me, and for most Unitarian Universalists I have known, scripture is not and never will be a closed book. [CJW note: The scriptures are loose-leaf, not permanently bound]

I for one (and am one of a host) have found in poetry, novels, drama, and the arts, ... much stimulus to hard thinking, help in understanding my emotions when they are troubled, [and guidance] discover the “I” amid the innumerable “we” and the “we” that sustains the “I.” Even certain rare classic movies and television productions soon, if not now, are the scriptures of a people (The Grapes of Wrath, Casablanca, the original Stagecoach, etc.).

But for today let me testify to several literary examples which for me have wisdom, striking imagery, and insight into our strange and wonderful, glorious and terrible human condition....

One time or another you have all sung the round, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Have you ever thought that life is but a dream? Prospero in THE TEMPEST said it superbly with the power and imagery of great poetry – scripture, if you will.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

All our days we make decisions, some important, many trivial. In times of difficult decision have you ever felt like a kite whipped around by cross-winds of uncertainty? Then the scripture of Brutus’ words before the battle of Philippi may confront one:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.”

A noted Shakespearean critic (Coleridge) once wrote that Shakespeare “addresses us in words that enchain the mind.” A succinct definition, to me, of scripture that addresses the human condition.

Is life worth living? Hamlet’s soliloquy is superb scripture because it matchlessly reveals the human dilemma of that interval between birth and death we call life:

“To be or not to be – that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep -
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, everyone of us has thought of death – our own death. Where are more profound and beautiful word pictures Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

...

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.”

Scripture is old. Scripture is new. Scripture is provincial. Scripture is universal. The bibles of the world are the treasuries of human aspirations and human recognitions; ever accumulating, ever sifted as persons struggle, lose, or win in the changing worlds of each generation. James Russell Lowell sensed this with a poetic grasp of larger truths:

“Slowly the bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair and hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder surges burst on cliff of clouds,
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.”

The winnowed expressions of human tragedy and human triumph are the Heretic’s Bible.