As I have mentioned a couple of times before, one of my guilty pleasures is listening to talk radio. I love arriving at work feeling like my head is going to explode because of these guys’ willingness to lie, slander, and commit logical fallacies in order to score political points.
Yesterday I was listening to Denis Prager mention something about the Bible. I went on the web to find what it was, but found an article he wrote last December instead. It is on Townhall.com, a site whose main purpose seems to be to provide an outlet for people who like to think of the weirdest thing they can say about liberals and then write something even more outrageous.
Prager wrote an essay entitled “The culture war is about the authority of a book,” that book being the Bible. Now in my opinion, the “culture war” is mostly an idea invented by conservative pundits. It has no more reality that the imaginary “Red State / Blue State” divide that both liberals and conservatives like to tout. Both are merely ways to get the base fired up. But Prager begins by saying,
If you want to predict on which side an American will line up in the Culture War wracking America, virtually all you have to do is get an answer to this question: Does the person believe in the divinity and authority of the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah?
While it would be easy to criticize him for his questionable use of the term “divinity” in this context, I want to stick to his main point. He goes on to say,
Name the issue: same-sex marriage; the morality of medically unnecessary abortions; capital punishment for murder; the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people “evil”; skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court; strong support for Israel. While there are exceptions — there are, for example, secular conservatives who share the Bible-believers’ social views — belief in a God-based authority of the Torah is as close to a predictable dividing line as exists.
This nothing more than another example of the “liberals don’t believe the Bible” argument that gets trotted out all the time. Prager shows that he knows this, because he points out that there are some secular conservatives who don’t believe the Bible but agree with his stance on these issues. In other words, the determining factor is not whether one believes the Bible. Instead, it is your political philosophy.
I am an example that disproves what Prager asserts.1 I fully accept the authority of the Bible (or more precisely, the authority of God as exercised through the Bible), but I disagree with him on a number of these issues. Our difference come about not because of a disagreement in authority but because of a disagreement in interpretation. I hold positions counter to him on five out of six of these issues, but I do so because of how I read the Bible.
It is ironic that this argument is coming from Prager, who is Jewish. Similar arguments have been used against Jews in the past, saying that their problem is that they do not accept the authority of the entire Bible and the divinity of Jesus. Although Prager and other talk show host decry the idea of tolerance as a liberal notion that is destroying America, that tolerance is what enables him to be accepted as a conservative.
Prager includes the term “Judeo-Christian” in his article.2 The term “Judeo-Christian” was first used at the beginning of the 20th century and only gained popularity during World War II, when the west was trying to distance itself from Hilter’s “Christians only” policy. In other words, fewer than 100 years ago the same argument would have been used as a way to attack people like Prager.
Prager’s sardonic use of this tactic also happens to violate one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Unless I am mistaken, that commandment is found in the same Torah whose authority he claims to support.
On April 10th, 2007 at 11:06 am
You may have addressed the question I am about to ask in things you have written, but what issues do you disagree with Prager about in terms of biblical interpretation? Here are the six issues he lists:
1. Same-sex marriage: There are plenty of biblical passages that condemn homosexual acts. I know of none that explicitly supports them.
2. The morality of medically unnecessary abortions: There are passages about God shaping the baby in his mother’s womb. Even Exodus 21:22, which pro-choicers cite to show that biblical authors did not see the fetus as fully human, punishes a man who causes a woman to miscarry.
3. Capital punishment for murder: The Bible upholds this.
4. The willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people “evil.†The Bible does this on numerous occasions.
5. Skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court: I agree that one can find support in the Bible for either side of this debate. There are passages that support peace and cooperation, and there are passages that are skeptical about human attempts to create a utopia.
6. Strong support for Israel: This depends on one’s definition of Israel: Is it the church or the nation in the Middle East?
But you said you disagree with Prager on five out of six of these issues. On four of them, Prager’s interpretation of Scripture seems right, to me.
On April 13th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
The issue where he and I agree is #4. I certainly agree that evil exists, although I would be more reticent to label individual people as evil than he is.
I would disagree with some of your interpretations of what the Bible supports. But that is precisely my point. Prager was arguing that the issue centers on authority, but the fact that I accept the authority of the Bible but disagree with his interpretation nullifies his claim.
On April 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Thanks for your response.
Are you saying that the passages in the Old Testament that explicitly support the death penalty (for example) actually do not do so, or are you just saying that the New Testament supercedes the Old on this issue?
On April 14th, 2007 at 7:31 am
The Old Testament provides the death penalty for a number of offenses, including unruly children and adultery. To pull out the passages that deal with murder and use them to argue in favor of the death penalty while ignoring the other verses is a questionable practice. It may be possible to make an argument for why you accept the imperative on the case of murder while you reject the imperative in other cases, but I rarely see this done.
In addition, the Old Testament use of the death penalty is tied in with the idea of communal holiness. The death penalty was not so much a punishment as a way of removing the unholy from their midst. This is a very different mindset from those who advocate the use of the death penalty today. When we use the Old Testament in ethics, we cannot just pull out their practices without taking into account the philosophical basis that underlies those practices.
Finally, one of the biggest arguments against the death penalty is that our religion is focused on a man who was killed in an unjust application of the death penalty. It sees to me that would at least lead us to be very careful before we advocate for the death penalty.
Thanks for your comments.
On April 14th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Thanks for your response.
There is a sense in which the death penalty in the Torah is designed to remove impurity from the land of Israel, since the land is defiled by bloodshed. I do not think that this is the only basis for it, or that it is the basis in all cases. Genesis 9 requires it, for example, and that was before there was a Jewish people or habitation in Canaan.
On April 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
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