Contradiction thy Name is Horton Hess and Skaggs
A small point, one I wanted to make the other day but I was out of time and had to run off. The Bobby J Collitch of Knollitch textbooks again. The one called Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, to be specific.
Twain’s skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel…Throughout her [Emily Dickinson’s] life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life.
Okay – so what do these bozos – Ronald Horton, Donalynn Hess and Steven Skeggs – mean by ‘the honest questioning of a seeker of truth’ then? Is ‘honest questioning’ the kind of questioning that knows ahead of time what the right answer is and honestly diverts itself with whatever intermediate activity it takes to get there? Is ‘honest questioning’ the kind that knows with cast-iron certainty what the answer to any given ‘question’ is and will accept no other no matter what the evidence or logic or sumptuous bribe? Is it honest and legitimate to use the honorific ‘honest questioning’ about a questioning that is required to find a particular answer no matter what? No, my brethren, I would say that it is not. I would say that it is ludicrous and self-flattering and a gross example of having it both ways to label ‘honest questioning’ the kind of pseudo-questioning (if indeed any) these buffoons – Horton, Hess and Skeggs – have in mind.
Or to put the matter more bluntly – what do they mean by it? What do they mean by upbraiding Dickinson for viewing ‘salvation’ as not a certainty and at the same time curling their Christian lip at Mark Twain’s skepticism for not being honest questioning? Eh? What do they mean by ever using the phrase ‘honest questioning’ at all in the same book in which they rebuke Dickinson for not ‘accepting’ the Bible as an ‘inerrant’ (!!) guide to life? For that matter what do they mean by writing a book at all, when their thinking is so flabby and fatuous and absurd? They shouldn’t be writing so much as a schedule of their favourite tv shows for the next week, let alone a book for tragically deprived high school students to read.
From that excerpt, the writers seem to be regarding Christina Rossetti as a “Protestant,” when she was, in fact, Anglo-Catholic (and therefore endorsed a number of positions with which our writers would disagree–rather strongly, in fact).
I wonder which Victorians would make the cut as right-thinking. Surely not Thackeray (rather skeptical), Dickens (consistently caricatures evangelicals), Eliot (an atheist), Disraeli (utterly bonkers theology, when he isn’t disbelieving in private), the Brontes (universalists), Gaskell (a Unitarian), Trollope (not especially kind to evangelicals, an attitude he probably inherited from his mother)…Newman, of course, would whack the authors of this textbook around a bit.
Charlotte M Yonge, perhaps? Maria Ward?
Yonge, another Anglo-Catholic, distrusted Protestantism’s evangelical branch; she thought that they meddled dangerously in areas that belonged properly to the clergy. So probably a no-go there.
*pause* This Maria Ward? ‘Cos Augusta Mary (Mrs. Humphry) Ward would send ’em screaming from the room. Of course, that would require them to get through Robert Elsmere (which, as thesis fiction goes, is remarkably good–but still, it’s thesis fiction).
Tsk – I meant Mrs Humphry – Mary (was she an Arnold, I suddenly wonder? or do I have that wrong too).
Well, let’s face it, hardly any Victorians would make their cut, which is why they cause all right-thinking people to wonder if it isn’t time to lay in a stock of cyanide pills.
I liked “Throughout her [Emily Dickinson’s] life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty”. Since when has certainty been possible, especially for believers? The 3 fundamental Christian virtues are “faith, hope and charity”. Faith means one has to hold certain ideas that cannot be proven, so certainty is obviously out of the question. Does these people understand their own religion?
These people have the temerity, the egotism, the unmitigated gall, to be absolutely certain of their own salvation?
I don’t expect them to put much stock in Augustine (quandam Manichee, late bishop of Hippo, alleged saint), nor even Jean Calvin nor John Knox. But do they not read their bibles? Are they not biblical literalists? Have they not read, marked learned and inwardly digested the epistles of Saul the Tentmaker (AKA Paul, another alleged saint)? So far as I can see, nothing is less certain than salvation.
‘Nothing is less certain than salvation’…? WTF? The whole point of conversion to Christianity is to ‘get’ the certainty of salvation as a free gift from God. You don’t have to believe it yourself, but this is the guts of Christian belief. It IS certain – to every Christian.
First-up disclaimer: I don’t approve of the kind of indoctrination these ‘textbooks’ seem to be. Go OB, smite!
Now, this ‘honest questioning’ vs ‘deliberate defiance’ point obviously arises from a viewpoint categorising people on ‘nearness to God’ or ‘potential openness for accepting belief’. While it is patent rubbish from a rationalist viewpoint, the believer has priorities other than establishing empirically grounded truths. It seems in this book the top priority is teaching people what facts and ideas to reject, so as to preserve or build belief.
The rational argument from a ‘defiant rebel’ (INFIDEL!!! BURN!!!!) is of no interest to such people. The aim of engagement is to move the ‘genuine’ seeker closer to belief, NOT to improve everyone’s shared ideas as in a scientific enquiry.
Committed infidels are not amenable to conversion, so should not be engaged with.
—- I don’t know about you, but the idea of this kind of stuff being used to teach my youngsters gives me the creeps.
“It IS certain – to every Christian.”
Is it? Isn’t it more a matter of formally certain – certain as doctrine, or dogma – but not necessarily phenomenologically certain?
And besides, what happened to the whole Lutheran-Calvinist thing? Where any one person’s salvation is not certain. It’s a ‘free gift from God’ but who gets the free prezzie and who doesn’t is known only to the generous giver.
Well, you probably know a lot more about Calvinism than I do.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a quota – which is a worry now their church is bigger than the quota!
You decried bait and switch; this would be a worse one! Going from ‘free salvation’ to having to work to keep it, or earn it, afterward. Puts me much in mind of the Cialdini stuff on a choice growing new legs of support after you have committed, and being MORE fiercely defended when the first reason is taken away.
The “Lutheran-Calvinist thing” is one of the “good bits” which the Reformation carried over from Catholicism. Sound Augustinian doctrine, based (according to Antony Flew) on the epistles of Paul, particularly Romans. See _Philosophy Now_, Issue 40, page 27, “Human Freewill and Divine Predestination”
OB has put more soberly the idea with which I was, admittedly, taking rhetorical liberties.
Next project: to reread the epistles, in conjunction with Asimov’s Guide to the Bible.