Posted on 04/12/2002 8:52:15 AM PDT by Richard Poe
SHOULD WE TAKE everything in the Bible literally? Author and journalist H.W. Crocker III says no.
His new book Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church (Forum, 2002) accuses Protestant fanatics of destroying Christendom, through their obsessive Biblical literalism, thus paving the way for Nazism, Bolshevism and other bloodthirsty cults of the post-Christian era.
It took guts to write this book. With the media vilifying Catholics on a scale not seen since Nero’s Rome, Crocker has dared to pen a panoramic, 2000-year history of the Church that makes no – absolutely no – apologies or concessions to Catholic bashers.
It is a breathtaking act of defiance.
Crocker lashes into pagans, heretics, Saracens, Byzantines and other long-dead troublemakers, with a passion undimmed by passing centuries. His withering polemics could have emerged from a 13th-century scriptorium.
Triumph is to conventional history as matter is to anti-matter. Place this book too close to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the resulting detonation would probably have to be measured in kilotons.
Among other jaw-droppers, Crocker reveals that Catholic dogma never demanded a strictly literal interpretation of Scripture. "Aha!" cry the born-agains. "More proof that the Pope is the Antichrist!"
Well, maybe. But consider Exodus 19:4, in which God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites: "You yourself have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself."
Now, as anyone knows who has watched Charlton Heston stretch forth his staff over the Red Sea, the Hebrews walked out of Egypt. They did not fly "on eagle’s wings." Exodus 19:4 is clearly meant to be understood metaphorically, not literally.
But if the Bible speaks sometimes in metaphor, how do we know when to take it literally?
Learned doctors of the Church debated such questions for centuries, citing Aristotle as readily as St. Paul, in an intellectual free-for-all reminiscent of the Athenian agora.
But the illiterate masses did not take part in these discussions. They were given a simpler faith, of candles, statues, incense, processions, incantations and stained-glass windows.
The medieval Church thus resembled the lamaseries of old Tibet, where monks probed the mysteries of the universe, while peasants in the countryside spun their prayer wheels and celebrated their festivals.
It was a wise and orderly system, tailored for a flesh-and-blood world in which some people are just plain smarter than others, and better equipped to handle subtle ideas. In any case, the system worked.
Then along came Martin Luther, a 16th-century German monk whose writings reveal him as a violent, hate-filled man, tormented by visions of the Devil.
Luther urged every Christian to read the Bible and draw his own conclusions. In the chaos that ensued, a phantasmagoria of Protestant sects emerged, many preaching a nightmare version of Christianity, in which every thought and custom not found in the Bible was forbidden.
John Calvin outlawed, "dancing, singing, pictures, statues… theatrical plays; wearing rouge, jewelry, lace." Children had to be named after people in the Old Testament. In England, Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas, because it was not in the Bible.
Witch-burning – rare in Catholic countries – rose to genocidal proportions in Protestant lands. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," says Exodus 22:18.
Eventually, however, people began noticing that, if you took everything in the Bible literally, much of it just didn’t make sense.
Forced to choose between a literal interpretation of Scripture and common sense, many intellectuals, by the 18th century, gave up on Christianity altogether.
But religion is power. And power abhors a vacuum. With Christianity in retreat, new gods arose to take its place.
French revolutionaries promoted a new cult of the state. They butchered faithful Catholics, men, women and children. In Notre Dame, Christ’s altar was replaced with an altar to the Goddess of Reason. But the real god of the revolutionaries was the guillotine, their sacrament the spilling of blood.
Kings and emperors once feared the Church. The threat of excommunication tamed many a tyrant. But by the 20th century, blasphemous madmen like Hitler, Stalin and Mao laughed in the Church’s face while transforming the earth into a reeking slaughterhouse.
What comes next? Catholics are on the run today, as beleaguered, in some ways, as the martyrs of pagan Rome.
Yet even now, there is hope. The Goddess of Reason has worn thin her welcome, in many hearts. Led by "a few good men," Crocker suggests, the Church may yet emerge from its catacombs to astonish the world.
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Richard Poe is a New-York-Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
As for the other issue, the burden of proof here is on you. Name me one thing that is, in a tangible sense, permanent and everlasting. And I beg you, please don't say something trite like "Christ's love."
The "nightmare" is people believing the lie of easy believerism and that their actions have no consequences. That is the nightmare.
SD
This title is false. There will be no end to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It will endure forever, long after all earthly kingdoms have fallen into the dust.
SHOULD WE TAKE everything in the Bible literally? Author and journalist H.W. Crocker III says no.
Where it is clearly meant to be taken literally, God Almighty says "Yes." I believe I will go with God, Mr Crocker.
His new book Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church (Forum, 2002) accuses Protestant fanatics of destroying Christendom, through their obsessive Biblical literalism, thus paving the way for Nazism, Bolshevism and other bloodthirsty cults of the post-Christian era.
This is such an outrageously stupid statement! Please show me how a literal interpretation of God's Holy Word led to nazism and communism! Both of these sicknesses reject God altogether and glorify sinful man. Totally against the Word of God!
It took guts to write this book.
Why does it take guts to slam fellow believers in Christ? I love the stand that many Catholics take against abortion and I applaud them for it. But of course I'm one of those Bible-believing Christians so that make me scum, right?
And as I'm fully aware, energy can be neither created nor destroyed and as such have no choice but to acknowledge that the human veil is not all we will ever know.
This does not mean that I need to believe in Jesus or St. Peter's gate or any of that tomfoolery.
Couldn't help but follow the thread and this caught my attention. Out of curiousity, and if you don't mind me asking, what are your beliefs regarding "life" after death?
1)There were other strands of Christianity which are just as old as the Roman/Orthodox Church, such as the Coptic Church in Africa and the Thomas Church in India.
2) The idea that the peasants should be content with a non-intellectual faith does not follow the model of its parent religion, in which all Jewish young men were to be literate enough to read the bible and be the spiritual leader in their home. The religion which Jesus practiced involved some public rituals at the temple, but was mainly a home based religion with rituals practiced at home, led by the father.
In the end, even the elect will be deceived. Here's proof.
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