In the effort to pay some last respects to the man, I took up Hitchens’ God is Not Great the other day. I didn’ t make it too far in mind you. Only through the first chapter. But that was enough, I think, to understand his basic concerns.
Now, his ultimate concern is clearly that religion does not leave room for free thinking. His point is that we are to think for ourselves and that religion stifles this. Fair enough. It strikes me as a gross misrepresentation of Biblical Scripture, which I believe is all about generating the free-thinking capacity of humankind, but I do get where he’s coming from.
He also says something therein that’s been on my mind lately, namely, that “the mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made.”
Now, for those who don’t know, the Bible is my Bible. That is, it’s my book. My resource. My faith. It’s what I turn to and identify with intellectually, religiously, or whatever, whether I understand it or not (which I certainly don’t, at least not in its entirety).
But here’s the thing: I’ve been quite convinced and quite at peace with the fact for a long time now that the Bible is man-made. Not just religion, which is to say the social structures which have the Bible (or some other sacred text) as their apparent foundation, but the Bible itself. I have no doubt and no trouble with the fact that both are man-made.
Now, I get why critics use this as an attack, or why Hitchens can call this “the most radical and devastating” criticism. That is, most faithful do insist upon the God-givenness of Scripture. That it is God’s book and that God is the author.
But where does this idea come from? And why is it so important that God, and not a human being (or human beings), wrote the books of the Bible?
Is it to ensure consistency across texts, as if only one author can ensure this? Is it to give the texts a status of Scripture, as if human beings are unable, by themselves, to write God-revealing texts or texts that are deeply consistent with each other?
I guess my question is, what do we (faithful) lose by getting rid of the idea of God’s authorship of Scripture? What do we gain by keeping it? What might we gain by getting rid of it?
One thing that we might gain by getting rid of it is, indeed, an indication of the power of humankind’s free-thinking. When I say that the Bible is my Bible, I don’t mean that I think it is God-inspired and that I must toe the line, but that I recognize it as an authority (of thought) far greater than me and that I aspire to it. The man-made-ness of the Bible is an inspiration and an incredible source of self-respect (or respect for humankind). One that isn’t inconsistent per se with the idea that God as author, but one that becomes so-much-more apparent when we attribute such works to human hands.