In prior postings, I’ve discussed the Bible’s absence from public discourse. And I’m not referring to mere quotation; rather, there is a cadence that’s missing from our literature and discourse and an outlook as well. People who think of themselves as urbane seem never to have read the Bible – even as literature. Think about it. People have only the slightest acquaintance with the foundational book of western civilization, a book shot-through with literary merit: history and narrative, poetry and proverb, gospel and epistle.
But as I said, there’s a cadence to the Bible. Literary, yes; intellectual, most certainly. But predominantly it has to do with world-view: one of mystery and awe, wonder and radical amazement at a God who is both present with us and utterly transcendent. A God who creates and blesses, guides and corrects, and who struggles with us in our struggles. A God who knows us and loves us.
Perhaps Rabbi Abraham Heschel said it best:
In reading the works of Western philosophy it is Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics or the Neoplatonists, whom we meet again and again. The spirit of their thinking hovers over every page of philosophical writing. However, we would look in vain for the Bible in the recesses of Western metaphysics. The prophets are absent when the philosophers speak of God.
What we mean by the absence of the Bible in the history of philosophy is not references or quotations; scriptural passages have occasionally found admittance. What we mean is the spirit, the way of thinking, the mode of looking at the world, at life; the basic premises of speculation about being, about values, about meaning. Open any history of philosophy. Thales or Parmenides is there; but is Isaiah or Elijah, Job or Ecclesiastes ever represented? The result of such omission is that the basic premises of Western philosophy are derived from the Greek rather than the Hebraic thinking.
There are two approaches to the Bible that prevail in philosophical thinking. The first approach claims that the Bible is a naive book, it is poetry or mythology. Beautiful as it is, it must not be taken seriously, for in its thinking it is primitive and immature. How could you compare it with Hegel or Hobbes, John Locke or Schopenhauer? The father of the depreciation of the intellectual relevance of the Bible is Spinoza, who may be blamed for many distorted views of the Bible in subsequent philosophy and exegesis.
The second approach claims that Moses taught the same ideas as Plato and Aristotle, that there is no serious disagreement between the teachings of the philosophers and the teachings of the prophets. The difference , it is claimed, is merely one of the expression and style. Aristotle, for example, used unambiguous terms, while the prophets employed metaphors. The father of this approach is Philo. Theology was dominated by the theory of Philo, while general philosophy took the attitude of Spinoza.
There is a story of a cub reporter who was sent to cover a wedding. When he came back he said dejectedly that he had no story because the bridegroom did not show up . . . .
It is true that one looks in vain for a philosophical vocabulary in the Bible. But the serious student must not look for what he already has. The categories within which philosophical reflection about religion has been operating are derived from Athens rather than from Jerusalem.
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