Man vs. God

There was an excellent debate ("God vs. Man") in last weekend's Wall Street Journal between two academic scholars who have spent their professional lives studying religion and the origins of belief in God. One, Karen Armstrong is an ex-nun and author of "The History of God," among others. The others, Richard Dawkins, is a professed atheist whose recent book "The God Delusion" was a best seller. I learned something new from reading it, particularly from Armstrong.

Like "many of the most influential Christian, Muslim and Jewish thinkers" of the past, Armstrong sees God as a "symbol," not as "hard fact." By "symbol," she means something that "points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence . . . whose existence is intuited by means of spiritual exercises." How beautifully said, I thought to myself. This is an idea of God I can believe in.

She went on to say that Genesis -- the "creation hymn" she calls it -- was not intended by its writers to be taken literally. Rather, she says, it was "a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion." And until the 17th century, Christian scholars, including St. Augustine, "insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically."

This interpretation, she says, was "standard practice in the West until the 17th century. Then, "in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christian leaders begain to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history." (italics mine).

It would be good if the 50% of Americans who take the Bible literally were aware of this historical fact.