Attack of the closet dogmatists
Don't believe people who claim the Bible is 'unclear'...
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
These words are the motto of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s famous novel, 1984. It introduces the concept of ‘doublethink’ — where a word is the exact opposite of what you think it means. It turns out that this is a power play by the Party - they maintain their control over the members of the Party by forcing them to believe things which are not true.
In this piece, I’d like to look at that third one — ‘ignorance is strength’ — in more detail. I think we are seeing this in operation today, but perhaps not in the way that Orwell imagined. Ignorance is being wielded as a tool to exert power over others, but it seems to be employed as a kind of debating strategy. I’ve noticed that people today, if they can’t respond to your arguments using facts and logic — especially when it comes to the Bible — simply declare the matter to be unclear and then believe whatever they wanted to believe in the first place.
This is nothing new. In order to help explain, I’m going to be using Mike Ovey’s piece The Art of Imperious Ignorance.
Declaring something ‘unclear’ is a power play
The beginning of the piece sets up the problem:
Earlier this year I found myself lured from the secure theological fastnesses of north London to a consultation on one of the hot topics of our day. One delegate listened to the contributions about what relevant biblical passages meant and then commented that s/he still did not know what the passages meant and the explanations offered just didn’t do it for him/her. The passages were unclear. I was surprised in one way, because I thought the explanations had been nothing if not clear. Unwelcome very possibly, but not unclear. The response, though, was not a disagreement in the sense of offering an alternative explanation which should be preferred for better reasons. This was not direct disagreement but something much more oblique. It was a disagreement that took the form of declaring that the passages were not clear.
The delegate in question did not respond to the arguments made with an alternative explanation, but simply shrugged off the presentation as ‘unclear’. This is a strategy which I have seen used many times. If you try to persuade someone of what the Bible says, bringing together various Bible passages and logical arguments, they will remain unconvinced — but will not offer an alternative reasoned explanation. Instead, they will simply shrug off what you say and dismiss it as ‘just your interpretation’ or ‘unclear’ or something like that.
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand why this strategy seems to be so popular:
In this article I want to argue that the claim to be ignorant on the grounds that something is unclear is actually quite ambitious. More than that, it can be an imperious claim that exercises power over others without, at times, the inconvenience of reasoned argument. No wonder it is so popular.
If I want to persuade someone of something the Bible says, they can simply declare anything I say to be ‘unclear’ or ‘not conclusive’ — words to that effect — and that will override my entire argument. No effort is needed on their part to show why what I have said is unclear or inconclusive, or to produce a better argument. It simply shuts down the debate.
This is why this kind of argument is a power play: it attempts to shut down someone’s entire argument as being ‘unclear’, without the inconvenience of defeating the argument.
For example, I was talking to someone recently who claims to be Christian but had quite different views to me about various Biblical topics such as the existence of hell. The interesting thing was, when I tried to make a case from the Bible, it seemed to be treated as a suggestion rather than as a conclusive argument. Although they were not able to respond with a better argument, they continued to believe whatever they believed in the first place. (I think they were too polite to say that my argument was ‘unclear’, but it seemed to me that that was the implication!)
This kind of thing is not confined to the church — far from it. It happens with all sorts of other ‘hot topic’ issues of the day such as transgender or climate change. Take J.K. Rowling as an example: no transgender activist can actually point to things she has said which show her to be ‘transphobic’. But that doesn’t stop them screaming loudly about it and accusing her of transphobia at every opportunity! There’s no need to prove your argument with facts and logic if you simply shout loudly enough — that seems to be what they believe, anyway.
It seems today that you can simply reject someone’s argument without feeling the need to provide a better argument. It’s simply enough to reject it out-of-hand and continue to believe whatever you believed in the first place.
Reasons for employing this tactic
Mike outlines a few reasons in the piece why people choose to debate this way. He says:
First, the coercive nature of the claims to ignorance or unclarity … why should something that is, allegedly, subjectively unclear to me be judged by me as unclear for you too? Secondly, there is the way those coercive claims were far from value-neutral but actually carried strong agendas of their own.
The point here is that judging someone else’s argument to be ‘unclear’ or invalid in some way is not value-neutral, but comes with an agenda. This is always the underlying reason: people have some hidden motive — perhaps even hidden to themselves. Why do transgender activists hound the likes of J.K. Rowling, heaping abuse on her while saying ‘#BeKind’? I believe it’s not a logical or rational thing - transgender is simply part of their new religion. They don’t see the absurdity and hypocrisy of them abusing a woman in the name of kindness.
The article continues:
At its worst, I can declare something unclear and then pursue my own line without needing to provide reasons for it—after all the issue is unclear. Declaring something unclear can maximise my freedom of action because it tends to remove an issue from the field of common debate. In its way, it is strongly individualist.
If there is something you want to do, some course you want to pursue, then it’s easier to try and invalidate arguments to the contrary rather than respond with better arguments. It saves you the bother of even having to rationalise - you can simply declare it a draw and then go off and do whatever you wanted to do in the first place. “Simples”, as the Meerkats might say!
One of the most attractive reasons for Christians in declaring arguments to be ‘unclear’ is to give the impression of humility while at the same time allowing oneself to dogmatically pursue one’s own chosen course. The article continues:
Yet most attractive of all is that the claim of lack of clarity or ignorance allows one to pursue one’s own position quite dogmatically while appearing to be very undogmatic. After all, the claim of ignorance looks as though it advances no position, but vitally it tacitly asserts that one’s opponent’s position cannot be decisively asserted—it is forever only a possibility, not a certainty on which one could base action or decision. There is something very rewarding in being a closet dogmatist while appearing to be the reverse.
What could be more humble than saying, “I don’t know” about something? However, if you say “I don’t know,” and then pursue your own position dogmatically, do you really not know? Or is the claim not to know simply a smokescreen, false humility, for what you want to keep believing in your pride?
I have come to understand that people who appear to be humble at first blush can be the most full of pride and pursue their own agendas most dogmatically. Sometimes it takes disagreement to really find out what someone is like, but it’s a good reminder that appearances can be deceiving. We do well not to be naive about such matters.
The Bible and clarity
There is an important reason why this topic matters so much when it comes to the Bible in particular. Saying that the Bible is unclear is a bit like saying to God “You weren’t able to communicate effectively to me.” If God is the supreme author of the Bible (see e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16), then any lack of clarity reflects on him. If God chooses to direct his church through his Word, then if his Word is unclear then his direction is also not clear! But I believe that God has spoken clearly through his word, and — by and large — the problem we generally have is less understanding what he has said as accepting what he has said. God knows our hearts, and he knows whether we really think things are unclear or whether there is some other reason.
Let me quote from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, from Luke 16:
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
Luke 16:27-29
Lazarus begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers about the dangers of Hades. But Abraham replies: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.” To our ears, this might sound a little short and uncaring. But, by contrast, I think it establishes a very important principle: God has given us his Word. He expects us to listen. There will be no excuses for not listening. We will not get brownie points on the last day for refusing to listen to God’s word - think about how he treated Zechariah (Luke 1:20).
If we really want to listen to the Word, if we are really seeking God’s will with humble and teachable hearts, then he will reveal himself to us. God has given us the Holy Spirit to help us — the same Spirit who inspired the words of the Bible.
Why the Bible matters
The reason why I wanted to write about this topic is because, as I said in a previous post, “If the church is to let the light in, then we need to break open the Scriptures and let God speak to us through them.” I believe the way forward for the church at the moment is to restore the Bible to its rightful place. One of the things which grieves me most about the world right now — and especially the church — is the fact that people seem to be so hard-hearted towards the Scriptures.
I fear that the tactic of claiming something to be ‘unclear’ is masking a hard-heartedness towards the Bible. If the Bible has any authority at all, it needs to be able to speak clearly to us and we need to listen to its voice.
This is how Mike’s article finishes:
Perhaps I should be more ready to adapt another of Hilary’s thoughts, that when faced with God’s revelation in the Bible, I should point less to a defect in the text (lack of clarity) but more to a defect in my understanding (subjective limits). Perhaps we should be less certain that parts of Scripture are ‘uncertain’.
Perhaps we should be less certain that parts of Scripture are ‘uncertain’ — amen and amen.
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