James Barr. Fundamentalism. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977 and 1978.
James Barr examines and critiques fundamentalism and conservative
evangelicalism. His focus in this book is mainly on Christian
fundamentalism, but he does include a brief section on Jewish treatments
of Scripture. Here are some of my thoughts, based upon my reading of
this book.
1. In many cases, Barr interacts with a fundamentalism that is not particularly extreme. This
fundamentalism is open to interpreting the days in Genesis 1 as great
spans of times rather than as literal days, has no problem with
evolution, and even notes serious problems with accepting that a global
flood occurred (i.e., the mixing of fresh and sea water killing off
certain sea creatures, a global flood creating astronomical problems by
increasing the earth’s mass, etc.). Young-earth creationism may not have been that prominent when Barr wrote this book!
2. I often get frustrated when I hear or read debates between
liberal and conservative Christians. Conservative Christians often
proclaim dogmatically that the Bible means such-and-such and that it’s
literal meaning is true, whereas liberal Christians retort that the
Bible is metaphorical. My dilemma is that there are cases in which I
tend to agree with the conservative Christians on what the Bible is
saying, but I think that what the Bible is saying is wrong because it
does not coincide with what reality (i.e., science, experience) seems to
be saying. Barr appears to have the same sort of approach, only he’s
responding to conservative Christians who say the sorts of things that I
have heard from the mouths of liberal Christians. Against the claim
that the days of Genesis 1 were large time spans, Barr argues that the
days in Genesis 1 were intended to be literal because they had evening
and morning. Against the view that the flood in Genesis was local
rather than global, Barr contends that the Genesis story itself is
depicting the flood as global. Barr’s point is that fundamentalists are
not being faithful to what the Bible says, whatever they may claim.
One way to address the apparent conflict between Genesis 1 and
science is to say that we should consider Genesis 1′s genre: perhaps
Genesis 1 is a temple ceremony celebrating creation (to draw from John
Walton), and we should consider Genesis 1 in light of that rather than
trying to reconcile it with modern science. Barr does not really
entertain that possibility, at least not in Fundamentalism, but
he does criticize fundamentalists for their rationalistic approach to
Scripture: that fundamentalists don’t look at the concerns of biblical
authors or the different ideologies within the Bible, but rather seek to
derive from the Bible propositions of what reality is like, and they
end up using a variety of approaches (some of them inconsistent or
arbitrary) to make the Bible agree with how they understand reality.
3. Barr said at the outset that he intended to discuss
fundamentalism rather than the religious use of the Bible, and he
referred to another book that he wrote, The Bible in the Modern World. As I was reading Fundamentalism,
however, I was wondering what exactly Barr believed about the spiritual
or religious use of the Bible. Did he maintain that a spiritual or
religious use of it was even legitimate? Does Barr believe, in short,
that the Bible is somehow the word of God?
It’s hard to tell from Fundamentalism. At times, Barr seems
to regard the Bible as a collection of merely human writings. At other
times, he appears to praise neo-Orthodoxy because it focuses on
important spiritual truths rather than conditioning Christianity’s
legitimacy on the Bible being thoroughly inerrant (i.e., Kings and
Chronicles agreeing on numbers). My impression is that Barr had a soft
spot in his heart for James Orr, who contributed to The Fundamentals,
yet had a view of divine inspiration that saw God’s hand in the events
leading up to the composition of the text, not only in what ended up in
the text itself.
I one time heard a professor say that Barr started out as an
evangelical, then Barr embraced neo-Orthodoxy, and then Barr despaired
of even the possibility of deriving a systematic (or a biblical)
theology from the Bible. Where exactly Barr was on that spectrum when
he wrote Fundamentalism is difficult for me to tell.
4. Barr is sensitive to the existence of diversity within
fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. He notes, for example,
that a fundamentalist in the pew might have a different reason for
believing in the Bible from a fundamentalist scholar or theologian. At
the same time, as I was reading Fundamentalism and seeing Barr
criticize fundamentalists for inconsistency, I sometimes wondered if the
people he was criticizing were inconsistent, or if rather different
fundamentalists were saying different things. For example, Barr notes
that, on the one hand, fundamentalists criticize historical-criticism
for being naturalistic—-for excluding the possibility of supernatural
intervention in the course of human events. Yet, on the other hand,
Barr points out examples of conservative scholars making naturalistic
arguments: interpreting the parting of the Sea of Reeds as a natural
(and thus a possible) occurrence, for instance. Is fundamentalism
inconsistent in this case, or should we rather say that fundamentalists
have expressed different opinions about naturalism?
5. Barr’s chapter on conservative evangelical biblical scholarship
was thought-provoking, even if I’m not entirely sure whether or not I
get what Barr is saying. I get that Barr has problems with how
conservative scholars have predetermined conclusions in mind as they do
their scholarship: they want to show that the Bible is inerrant. But
Barr says that, even if conservative conclusions are true, that does not
ultimately support conservative evangelicalism. One reason he gives is
that the methodology conservative scholars used to arrive at their
conclusions is not exactly friendly to a fundamentalist approach: it can
bracket out the supernatural (well, Barr later equivocates about
whether historical-criticism necessarily does that), its conclusions are
tentative rather than absolute (and Barr notes that conservative
scholars like to exploit this when criticizing liberal scholarship, when
their own results are tentative, too), and it doesn’t exactly
necessitate the lively, authentic relationship with God that
fundamentalists promote.
I don’t believe that conservative scholarly arguments necessarily
prove that the conservative Christian faith is true; at the same time,
perhaps they can alleviate the concern of conservative Christians that
the Bible has errors, against critics who argue that it does.
Personally, I think that inerrancy imposes a high standard on the Bible
that the Bible itself cannot meet, and I prefer to be open to where the
evidence leads, whether the results are conservative or not. I am not
against conservative scholars offering arguments for their positions,
however. Everyone has biases, but the arguments that people offer can
still be subjected to analysis based on reason. One conservative
argument that I believe deserves serious consideration is one that
Kenneth Kitchen makes. Barr quotes Kitchen as saying that there are no
ancient Near Eastern parallels to the documentary hypothesis that
critical scholars advance for the Pentateuch. Why should we be
dogmatic about the documentary method of compiling the Pentateuch
existing in ancient Israel, if there is no evidence that a similar
phenomenon occurred elsewhere in the ancient Near East? Well, I don’t
want to dogmatically claim that the ancient Near East lacked this sort
of phenomenon (and maybe scholars have even discussed this issue), but I
do think that Kitchen asks a good question.
6. Like a number of critics of fundamentalism, Barr depicts
fundamentalism as a reaction against modernism, and he asserts that the
way fundamentalists approach the Bible differs from Christian
pre-Enlightenment treatments of it. (Barr does not think that
fundamentalism is characterizing modernism correctly, for it contends
that modernism has an anti-Christian bias, when it does not. According
to Barr, fundamentalists are treating modernism as if it is deism, which
was rather critical of Christianity.) Barr notes overlaps,
for he sees in the Bible a zealous concern for doctrinal purity that
would later characterize fundamentalism. But he also contrasts
fundamentalism with pre-Enlightenment Christianity: the church fathers
believed Jesus was both God and man, whereas fundamentalists focus on
Jesus being God; John Calvin questioned Peter’s authorship of one of the
epistles attributed to him, whereas fundamentalists insist on Petrine
authorship; many pre-Enlightenment Christians believed that God dictated
Scripture to human beings, whereas fundamentalists posit some scenario
in which humans had initiative as authors of Scripture, and yet the
words are somehow God’s (or what God wants written).
I’m not sure if Barr is entirely fair in some of his arguments. For
example, I’d say that fundamentalists believe Jesus is God and man, but
they focused on Jesus being God in response to religionists who
(according to them) were portraying Jesus as a mere mortal. But Barr
does well to compare fundamentalism with pre-Enlightenment Christianity,
and I hope that there are books and articles that go even deeper in
discussing this issue.
7. One question that was in my mind as I was reading Barr’s
book was whether fundamentalism could be intellectually stimulating.
There was a time when I was looking to it for intellectual stimulation,
believe it or not. Historical-criticism seemed to me to reduce the
Bible’s meanings to an ancient context, and I was looking for a richer
appreciation of the Bible, from an academic and also a spiritual
standpoint. I thought that seeing the Bible as God’s word (or even
God’s words) would do that for me. That way, I could believe that every
part of the Bible communicated some profound truth or lesson. And I
could draw from the results of historical-criticism, ancient Jewish and
Christian interpretation, and even modern theology in a spiritually
edifying way.
Barr, however, depicts a fundamentalism that is not exactly that open.
He says that fundamentalists dismiss all theology that does not
coincide with a belief in biblical inerrancy (and he says more than once
that non-conservative theology has been more thoughtful than
conservative theology—-though he does seem to like neo-Orthodoxy, which
is somewhat conservative). He also states that fundamentalists do not
insist on the importance of the virgin birth because they are interested
in probing the dimensions and significance of the virgin birth, but
rather because they are using it as a checklist: one has to believe this to be a Christian.
I have to admit that I used to be like a fundamentalist in
this regard. I tended to dismiss non-conservative theology because it
discounted the inerrancy of Scripture, and I wondered where exactly
non-conservative theologians were getting their opinions about God, if
they did not deem Scripture to be fully reliable. I also had my
doctrinal checklists. I still wonder what the basis for theology can
be, if Scripture is not inerrant, and I question whether there is a
whole lot of deep meaning in the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Still, I wish that I had gone with my dream of using fundamentalism as a
way to encourage learning, rather than to discourage it. In a sense, I
did, but I wish that I had read more theology. Well, it’s never too
late! The problem is that, now, I’m not sure how to be edified by the
Bible or Christianity, when I have doubts about it.
8. I thought some about Second Isaiah as I was reading Barr’s book.
Barr notes that many fundamentalists insist that only one Isaiah wrote
the entire book of Isaiah, and yet he interacts with one conservative
scholar who is open to more than one author of Isaiah (and Barr
considers this to be yet another compromise that fundamentalism has made
with modernity). Barr quotes this scholar expressing
skepticism that Isaiah of Jerusalem would be standing outside of the
Temple, talking about Cyrus and the return of the Jews from exile, a
message that was not particularly relevant to the Jews of Isaiah of
Jerusalem’s day. I am rather ambivalent on this issue. I would hope
that the case for Second Isaiah being written during the Babylonian
exile would be stronger than this, and that it’s not based on an
anti-supernaturalistic presupposition (namely, Isaiah of Jerusalem could
not have mentioned Cyrus because Cyrus wasn’t around yet), or a notion
that Isaiah of Jerusalem couldn’t have looked beyond the exile that he
was forecasting to a return from exile. Why couldn’t he have?
I guess where I end up is that I believe that Second Isaiah had a
message that was relevant specifically to the Jews in Babylonian exile,
and yet the book seems to be implying that the restoration would fulfill
prophecies uttered years before. Maybe Second Isaiah was like
Daniel (as liberal scholars conceive of the Book of Daniel): a book that
was said to be written in the distant past as a prophecy of what was
going on in the present.
9. On page 328, Barr lampoons what conservative evangelicals have
written about ethics. Barr notes passages about not playing with
people’s emotions, and refraining from holding hands unless the
relationship is serious, and he considers that sort of ethical thought
to be shallow compared to what mainstream theologians have come up
with. He acknowledges that fundamentalist couples may be happy, but he
thinks that’s due to their common selfless religious commitment, not to
“mediocre guidance on ethical questions…”
This is actually a provocative passage in Barr’s book, for it makes me think about whether what works is necessarily the best.
A fundamentalist naivety might work in helping me to have peace in life
and better relationships with other people. But would it be satisfying
and fulfilling to me, on an intellectual or a spiritual level? And
would it be right for me to find happiness in a belief system when I
have doubts that it is even true? Is there a way for me to have my cake
and eat it, too?
10. On page 103, Barr says that colleges becoming disconnected from
churches has actually resulted in more conservatives teaching Bible and
theology. I don’t want to expand on this, but I just note it
because it exemplifies something about Barr’s book: that you will find
interesting, unexpected things in it!
Notwithstanding this long post, I don’t think that I did justice to
Barr’s book, since there is so much in it. But some books are like
that!