RE: Is Christianity Inherently Supportive Of Slavery And Misogyny?
July 29, 2021 at 2:41 pm
(This post was last modified: July 29, 2021 at 3:00 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(July 25, 2021 at 5:51 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Is Christianity Inherently Supportive Of Slavery And Misogyny? The answer is, unfortunately yes. Or at least it can and sometimes does.
It seems to me that there are two broad strategies that are implemented when approaching Scripture; and given that they lead to different conclusions, they often reflect Christian/Atheist differences:
Approach 1 interprets the Bible bottom-up. As such, Christian's often lay the basics and fundamentals down at the base of the pyramid (things such as God is love or Treat your neighbor as yourself) and work their way up to less essential and more debatable parts of Scripture. And if a verse seems odd given the whole, it can be left with a question mark without consequence; or if it leads to a problematic interpretation, they can retreat to a lower step and course-correct. (Differences between religions often occur at the base of the pyramid, whereas differences between denominations occur near the top.)
Approach 2 interprets the Bible top-down. It takes the parts that seem problematic or debatable (things such as Paul said women should be silent in Church or There are verses about slavery), and makes them a starting point through which the rest of Scripture is interpreted. It inverts the pyramid, so to speak. In atheism this might lead to easy rejection of the whole structure, given that if the inverted base is removed, the entire pyramid collapses. And in radical Christian groups it might lead to extremism, given that a single verse shapes their entire interpretation of Scripture.
My argument is that Approach 1 is the only appropriate approach. Whereas Approach 2 often results in a Strawman. For example, it leads to conclusions that many Christians would reject (such as your argument that Christianity inherently supports X or Y). It also opens the door to "nutpicking," when you look for members that use Approach 2 to justify things like misogyny, and make them representative of Christianity.
Given this framework I would ask: Do you think that "If you're a Christian, and you want to justify your misogyny," that you could still do so using Approach 1?
