THE WAR AGAINST OLD BOOKS

 

When one finds oneself in conversation with a modern religious sceptic, one is treated almost invariably to the dismissal of, “your old books”.  It happens so often that it must be a tactic advocated in the assault manual of some secular High Command: part of the strategy for the eradication of the past in the construction of our brave New world.  (Itself a phrase from the past: but that is by the way.)

     The nature of the assault is interesting.  To dismiss the books because they are religious would be one thing; to dismiss them because they are old is another.  Truth, insofar as truth exists, is something modern: the more modern the more truth.  That takes the discussion beyond the grounds of religion and creates a new battlefront.  There are atheists, after all, who are classicists.  The content of old books is their livelihood. Which side would they be on in this particular battle?    And the dismissal of old books as a generality is, after all, rather sweeping: there are old books and old books.  The point is worth exploring.

 

When I was very young, and used to visit my grandparents, I would immerse myself in my grandfather’s Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Even I, young as I was, realised that this was not a current edition.   That raised a problem: when is a book of knowledge no longer a book of knowledge?  I could see, for instance, that some facts about Shakespeare were fixed:  birth date, death date, number of plays, wives, children, best beds etc.  And I could see that the facts about his place of birth were more fluid: changing population, buildings, occupations etc.  (I had seen such changes, with my own young eyes, in to the suburb where we lived).  Some facts, like those about Shakespeare (and pending new revelations) remained facts; other facts, like those about Stratford, became altered according to circumstance.  (Saying that, we must be careful: the population and townscape of Stratford in, say, 1900 are fixed facts; despite subsequent development.  A building not there in 1900 will never be there in 1900; even if it is there now.  In the same way, attitudes not prevalent there in 1900 will never be prevalent there in 1900; however prevalent they may have become since.)

    That old set of Britannica can serve, I think, as a paradigm of how some sceptics regard believers in relation to the Bible: clinging to an out-of-date book of supposed facts when the facts have since changed in the light of new knowledge.  It depends, of course, on how ‘truth’ is purely factual.   But more of that later.

 

Let us now take a different example: say the works of Galen.  I’ve only ever read a page of Galen.  It was in translation, and about bloodletting.  Galen didn’t know about the circulation of the blood.  He may have been the outstanding physician of his day, but – by our modern standards – his medical knowledge was not only limited, but dangerous.  I wouldn’t want anyone operating on my heart or lungs using a Galen text as a source.  An old book that is well and truly superseded.

     Yet not entirely.  What about valid observations as to the properties of plants?    It is fascinating in The Name of the Rose to read of just how much the medieval herbalists had discovered.  They may have recorded their observations in books now old to us, but they were true observations that are no less true today: even if we now use chemical equivalents that can be produced en masse.  The properties of rhubarb or digitalis are not discredited for having been found out a long time ago.

 

Let us now consider knowledge of a more abstract sort.  There are those who maintain that mathematical truths are fixed truths.  2 + 2 = 4 was true before the Universe came into being, and will still be true even after the Universe has ceased to exist, or – unlike an historical fact – would still be true even if the Universe  had never existed.   “Two and two make five” in 1984 is known to be a lie, even by those who insist on it.  2 + 2 = 4 would still be true, even if it occurred in Euclid; its presence in an old book would not invalidate it.  So some old books can contain at least some truth.

     But, of course, there we’re talking facts.  That’s different.  All right, then, consider Aristotle’s Poetics.  Why does tragedy move us?   For tragedy to work we have to feel pity and fear.  If we cannot care about the victim, we cannot feel pity; we cannot feel fear unless we consider that the victim’s fate might be our own.  We are emotionally purged by the empathetic process of seeing misfortune happen to someone else. 

     That’s not true the way of 2 + 2, but it’s a different sort of truth: true enough to have been written yesterday.  You could apply it to the next sad film or television programme you see, and appreciate the relevance. 

     Or consider the story of Thermopylae from Herodotus.  The fate of Leonidas can still move us the way it might do on the news tomorrow; for bravery in the face of overwhelming odds is not a topic made irrelevant by time.   Herodotus – who recorded the incident – was a genius, although he lived long ago: sharp in observation of different cultures; fulsome in his praise of the Egyptians, although he himself was a Greek.  The basic facts of the Histories need not be invalidated because they are old facts.  True, there is interpretation.  We might be modern, and regret that the Persians didn’t win.  (Maybe they’ll make up for that soon; if they go nuclear).  But even if we say it’s a pity, we are conceding the fact – recorded by Herodotus – that they lost at Plataea.

 

A couple more quick considerations, and my short survey are complete.  Christ washed the disciples’ feet.  There is, I believe, at least one denomination that follows this practice before a meeting.  While not saying that this is wrong, I would argue it is not necessary. The disciples lived in the days of sandals and in a dusty environment.   Males in the West tend to wear shoes and socks, and many work indoors and behind unopened windows.  What are we committed to by Christ’s action: a specific historic example, or to an ongoing principle behind the example?  We may not have to wash one another’s feet nowadays, as a matter of course; but the principle of service to others by mundane tasks remains an imperative. 

     In the early days of motor cars, a man would walk in front with a chequered flag, warning pedestrians of dangerous speeds up to 15 mph.   The flag has gone, but not the principle:  now we have fixed warning signs about speed restrictions.  The biblical injunctions might be the same: a set of principles – based on love of God and your neighbour – that can be applied to a wide variety of situations. 

 

The question I usually put to the sceptic (assuming he/she will suspend disbelief enough for a moment to pretend the existence of God) is this: “If you were God, when would you have got in touch with the human race?  Now, in the twenty-first century, or way back in the primitive and dusty past?”  (Explain creation in terms of 2013, and think how primitive it would seem a n hundred years hence.)

     With your explanation (as God) of why you needed get in touch, and why the human relationship with yourself was no longer spontaneous; although you were the Creator.  What had gone wrong.  And why.  And how it could be put right: short and long term. 

     If that question is allowed – by no means clear cut: some will fight tooth and nail against admitting even the hypothesis (which rather confirms the divine diagnosis) – there is scope for another one:  “If you were God, how would you get in touch?”

    That of course depends on what sort of a divinity God is; and if God exists, and has a determinate nature which precludes certain actions, then the actual options are not, limitless.

    “Subdue the Earth” – a command that any of my regular readers will know I keep coming back to – suggests a collaborative intent between God and humanity. Following on from that, God’s written self-revelation would be a collaboration with human minds: until the ultimate divine/human collaboration of the Incarnate Word. 

 

The Bible.  Primitive in parts in the way Galen was primitive – its talk of flocks, and shepherds, myrrh and hyssop - and true, beyond that,  in the way Galen was true.  A revelation of the unchanging Nature of God: as unchanging as the unchanging truths of mathematics.  Rooted in historical facts like the facts of Herodotus; and with principles for conduct as contemporary, and capable of reinterpretation, as Aristotle’s theory of catharsis.  Above all, the big narrative (ignoring Lyotard) of Creation, Fall,  and Redemption.  All this in an old book: unchanging divine truth filtered through the minds and knowledge of an ancient people.  So what is the real nature of the complaint against the Bible?  Its age?  Or its message?

 

Both, I’d say.  Remember, though, that the war against the Bible is a part of the larger war against the past by those committed to a future Utopia.    If the Bible goes down that is not the end of it.  Say goodbye also, to Homer and to Virgil, to Aeschylus and Plato.

     Although, it must be said, an exception might be made for Epicurus, or Lucretius.  Even an old book may be allowed to survive; if its message accords with the assumptions of Modernity.