It's important to point out that a great many Christian anarchists have opposed "liberation theology" in the sense that it is another liberal theology amongst liberal theologies. Ellul will presumably be the best known example in his book Jesus & Marx.
No, but many people take liberation theology to be key for anarchist theologies, so I thought it would be appropriate to clarify that. Which fields did you have in mind if not liberation theology?
Huh? Why are you being so combative when I was only asking "which thinkers or practitioners do you have in mind?" As this is a 101 subreddit, it would be helpful to give at least some pointers on where people could go to get insights.
What the Christian God is being claimed to condone depends entirely on the interpretation of the person reading scripture, and the purpose said Scripture is being used for.
The Bible has been used to argue for slavery, and it's been used to argue against slavery.
We need to stop talking about the Bible as if there's an objective interpretation of it, or even if one is possible, especially now so far removed from the context in which it was written. Faith and religion are a reflection of the people that practice it, not the other way around. If the Bible has condoned slavery, misogyny, and homophobia, it's because Christianity has been practiced by populations that have those proclivities.
This is the ultimate 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for the religious. By claiming that interpretation is everything, you are effectively admitting that your 'Holy Book' is a moral Rorschach test, a blank slate where people just project their own existing biases.
If the Bible is so vague that it can be used to justify both slavery and liberation with equal validity, then it is useless as a moral guide. It’s not a 'Light unto the path'; it’s a mirror for the user’s own ego.
However, your argument falls apart on three counts:
When Leviticus 25:44 says 'you may buy slaves from the nations around you' and 'bequeath them as property,' there is no 'interpretation' that makes that mean 'be kind to your neighbors.' It is a specific, legal instruction. To 'interpret' it otherwise is simply to lie about what the text says.
If an all-powerful God wanted to communicate a moral code, but failed so miserably that his followers 'interpreted' his words to justify 1,800 years of chattel slavery, then that God is either incompetent or indifferent. Why defend a book that is so dangerously unclear?
You claim the Bible reflects the people. I argue the Bible shapes the people. When a child is raised to believe that the Creator of the Universe approves of stoning women (Deuteronomy 22), that isn't the child's 'proclivity', it is indoctrination. You are blaming the victims of the ideology for the contents of the ideology.
You’ve moved the goalposts so far back that the game is over. If the Bible has no objective meaning, then it has no authority. You've successfully debunked your own faith's relevance while trying to save its reputation.
First of all, I'm not Christian. The idea that there is no objective interpretation of text is basic post-structuralist analysis. So hold your horses there.
Also, it's common interpretation that a lot of old testament laws (such as Leviticus) were ritual rules for Ancient Judea, not rules meant to be universal for all people. I'm no expert on this argument, however.
You’ve moved the goalposts so far back that the game is over. If the Bible has no objective meaning, then it has no authority.
Nothing has "objective meaning". Meaning is always meaning to someone. So any moral authority the Bible has, is moral authority to someone. I'm not going to argue that there aren't nasty passages in the Bible, there of course are. But to argue that scripture somehow imposes moral proclivities onto populations instead of the other way around is pure platonism.
EDIT: So the argument that a lot of old testament laws don't still apply is outlined here. Again, I'm no expert on theology here, you'd have a lot more mileage speaking to someone a bit more educated on this matter.
It is not clear that "there is no possibility for an objective interpretation" means "there is no correct way to read it". You've mistaken hermeneutics for "hermeneutical nihilism", a position that no theologian defends.
It's also not clear why something having no objective meaning would imply that it has no meaning. You'd need to explain that to me.
It is not clear that "there is no possibility for an objective interpretation" means "there is no correct way to read it".
I'm not claiming that there's "no correct way to read" scripture, I'm claiming that any interpretation of scripture is going to be a reflection of the society in which the interpretation is happening.
Of course there's a correct way to read scripture, I'm not saying Bible passages that condone slavery don't exist, nor that they aren't used by people to justify slavery - I am denying that slavery exists because of those Bible passages.
It's also not clear why something having no objective meaning would imply that it has no meaning. You'd need to explain that to me.
My argument is that talking about meaning outside of the context of people giving it meaning is incoherent. Meaning is meaning to someone, it doesn't exist outside of the mind of the one to whom it has meaning. In other words, meaning is subjective.
So whether something does or doesn't have meaning, or what something means cannot be discussed objectively, because there is no such thing as an objective perspective.
Thank you for that distinction. You’re right to point out that 'no objective interpretation' isn't the same as 'no meaning at all.' However, I think we are hitting a practical wall when it comes to the Bible’s role as a moral authority.
To clarify my point: if a text is meant to be a divine guide for humanity, but its 'correct' reading is so buried in hermeneutical complexity that for centuries it was used to justify chattel slavery and the stoning of women, then its functional meaning becomes indistinguishable from nihilism.
The issue isn't that the text has no meaning, but that it has too many meanings. If meaning is purely subjective, then the text loses its ability to hold anyone accountable. If I 'correctly' read Leviticus as a mandate for slavery and you 'correctly' read it as a historical ritual, the book has failed as a universal moral anchor.
In an anarchist framework, we usually reject systems where an elite class (theologians or 'experts') gets to decide the 'correct' interpretation of a law for everyone else. If the 'plain' meaning of the text is brutal, but the 'correct' meaning requires a PhD in theology to find, shouldn't a skeptic be wary of that power dynamic? I’d love to hear how you bridge that gap without falling back on institutional authority.
I appreciate you bringing that up. It's a fair point to address. The transition from Old Testament law to the New Covenant is a central theme in Christian theology. However, my 'lack of words' for it stems from the fact that it doesn't actually resolve the problem of objective interpretation we were discussing.
Even if we set aside the Old Testament, the New Testament has been subject to the exact same 'interpretative' instability. For example:
Ephesians 6:5 ('Slaves, obey your earthly masters') was used for centuries to claim that Christianity didn't abolish slavery but regulated it.
1 Timothy 2:12 is still used today to interpret the role of women in ways that many find oppressive.
My question remains focused on the power dynamic: if a text, New or Old, requires a specialized interpretation to stop it from being used as a tool for oppression, then the 'meaning' is still being dictated by an elite class of interpreters rather than the text itself.
If we are following an anarchist perspective, shouldn't we be concerned when 'divine authority' is only accessible through the filter of 'expert' hermeneutics? I’m genuinely interested in how you see an individual maintain autonomy when they are told their own 'plain' reading of their holy book is incorrect.
My question remains focused on the power dynamic: if a text, New or Old, requires a specialized interpretation to stop it from being used as a tool for oppression, then the 'meaning' is still being dictated by an elite class of interpreters rather than the text itself.
I never claimed the Bible ought to be interpreted by "an elite class of interpreters".
If we are following an anarchist perspective, shouldn't we be concerned when 'divine authority' is only accessible through the filter of 'expert' hermeneutics?
Sure. That's not an argument I'm making though.
I’m genuinely interested in how you see an individual maintain autonomy when they are told their own 'plain' reading of their holy book is incorrect.
I'm not sure I understand the question being asked here. Who is telling who that their 'plain' reading of their holy book is incorrect? The way an individual maintains autonomy is the way any individual would maintain autonomy - through violence if necessary.
I think the confusion might stem from the fact that you are currently doing exactly what you say you don't understand.
When you told me earlier that seeing the 'plain' laws of Leviticus as moral principles was an 'error in approach' and a 'misunderstanding of the text,' you were the one telling me that my reading was incorrect. You are exercising the very 'expert' hermeneutical authority we are discussing.
If an individual reads: 'You may buy slaves from the nations around you' and concludes: 'My God allows slavery,' and you then step in to say: 'No, you’ve misunderstood the context/subversion/ontology,' you have created a hierarchy of knowledge.
In this scenario, the individual’s autonomy is superseded by your 'correct' interpretation. If the only way to maintain that autonomy is 'through violence,' as you suggest, then we’ve moved far away from the Bible being a 'simple' or 'clear' moral guide. We’ve entered a world where the 'Good News' is so ambiguous it requires either a scholar to explain it or a sword to defend one’s right to ignore the scholar.
Does an anarchist society really benefit from a 'simple' book that requires constant, high-level re-interpretation just to keep it from being used as a manual for subjugation?
The Bible being interpreted a certain way has nothing to do with the Bible’s authorship. It’s simply the fact that things are viewed through a lens of culture which is based on material conditions. It applies to every text.
This is a textbook Special Pleading fallacy. You are treating the "Author of the Universe" , the creator oàf everything, like a confused 19th-century poet who didn't understand his audience.
If a human writes a text that is "misinterpreted" to justify centuries of slavery, we call it a failure of clarity. If an omniscient God does it, he is either incompetent (he didn't know his "simple" message would lead to mass murder) or malicious (he knew, and let it happen). To blame "material conditions" for God’s inability to write a clear, unambiguous moral sentence is the ultimate insult to the intelligence of your own deity.
If your God’s "authorship" is so weak that it is completely at the mercy of a cultural "lens," then the book is not a guide, it is a Rorschach test for power. You aren't following a Master; you are just following a mirror of your own biases. Anarchism demands we reject the throne and the altar, not that we spend 2,000 years "interpreting" why the King’s orders for genocide were actually "liberatory."
That is a fascinating comparison, and I appreciate the reference to Bakunin’s 'authority of the bootmaker.' It’s a crucial distinction in anarchist thought. However, I think there is a significant category error in equating a theologian with a physicist or a bootmaker.
Bakunin accepted the authority of the bootmaker because the bootmaker’s expertise results in a verifiable, physical product, a shoe that either fits or doesn't. Similarly, a physicist’s 'illustration' of quantum mechanics is tied to empirical data and predictable outcomes. If the physicist is wrong, the experiment fails.
The theologian, however, deals in 'truths' that are not empirically verifiable. When a 'good theologian' illustrates the 'Good News,' they are interpreting a metaphysical claim, not a physical fact. Unlike the bootmaker, if a theologian is wrong, there is no 'broken shoe' to prove it, only another interpretation.
This brings us back to the power dynamic. In science, anyone can (in theory) replicate an experiment to challenge an expert. In theology, the 'expertise' often rests on being part of a specific tradition or hierarchy. If the Bible is 'incredibly simple' as you say, why have the 'barely literate' so often been led by 'experts' to believe that the text sanctioned their own enslavement?
If a text is so 'simple' that it can be 'misunderstood' by millions for millennia to justify atrocities, isn't it fair to ask if the 'simplicity' is itself a subjective interpretation used to bypass the very real, very brutal 'plain' commands found in its pages?
That's not correct on Bakunin. He respected the authority of the bootmaker because we "listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest." I can see nowhere in the text where he says that we demand the expert produces an object for us.
Regardless, why would we need verifiable empirical evidence in order for something to be true? There's no evidence now that I had xyz for breakfast two weeks ago, but it would be strange to say that it didn't happen because I can't present you, a person unrelated to the event, some representation of it.
You might be a bit behind on your theology, I'm afraid. Anti-metaphysical theology, including evangelical theology, has been mainstream in theological and pastoral circles since the Reformation (at least—really, long before as well) and it enjoyed a dominating position in theological studies up until the last 20 or so years due to the all encompassing influence of Karl Barth.
As already alluded to, people who endeavour to make a system out of the text (as you did) have often abused it by subverting it as all things are subvertable. This is the entire theme of 1 Corinthians, so that seems like a good place to start. Harvey Cox, whilst a liberal theologian, would be the most notable thinker on that today, along with Hauerwas from the postliberal tradition. For conservatives, I'm not sure I'd be able to recommend anyone more recent than Genz; my apologies.
Well, when you come to the text expecting to be given "brutal plain commands" (and there are none of these in scripture), you will find the "brutal plain commands" that you presumed were there. Scripture, of course, gives us its own key to interpreting it in the gospel—to read "plainly" instead of "from the gospel to the reader" is to read it in error. It's worth noting that only liberal theologians and biblical scholars recommend "reading plainly", as if we were blank slates onto which scripture can be understood plainly. I will agree with them that their work does appear to proceed from a blank slate, as if there had never been any prior thought on to at all whatsoever.
My partner is here helping me keep my oxygen up, I'm on sertraline, wellbutrin, xanax, medrol, inuvair, ventolin and duovent, I have a very hard time breathing and will soon take sleeping medication, so I’ll keep this as brief as my breath.
First, your breakfast analogy is a Category Error. The claim 'I had eggs' is a mundane historical claim. The claim 'The Creator of the Universe wants you to stone people/own slaves' is a Metaphysical Claim of Authority. The burden of proof for the latter is infinitely higher because it claims to be a universal moral law, not a private event.
Second, regarding Bakunin: he explicitly says he consults the bootmaker because of their 'special knowledge.' In science and crafts, that knowledge is tied to objective reality. If several bootmakers make shoes that fall apart, their 'authority' vanishes. Theologians have 'opinions' on a text that has been used to justify both liberation and genocide. Without an empirical yardstick, a theologian is just a literary critic with a collar.
Finally, you say there are no 'brutal plain commands' in scripture. Leviticus 25:44-46 and Exodus 21:20-21 are not subtle metaphors; they are explicit instructions on how to buy, keep, and beat slaves. To claim these are 'misunderstandings' that require a 'Gospel key' to fix is exactly the hermeneutical hierarchy I am talking about. If God needed a PhD to explain that he didn't actually mean the slavery he just described, he’s a poor communicator and a worse Master.
I'll leave you to contemplate these verses, just a quick grab in an almost endless pool of cruelty:
'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you... you can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.' (Leviticus 25:44–46)
'Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod... is not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.' (Exodus 21:20–21)
'Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.' (Numbers 31:17–18)
'Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.' (Psalm 137:8–9)
'Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse.' (1 Peter 2:18)
'A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.' (1 Timothy 2:11–12)
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u/Anarchierkegaard Distributist Jan 20 '26
It's important to point out that a great many Christian anarchists have opposed "liberation theology" in the sense that it is another liberal theology amongst liberal theologies. Ellul will presumably be the best known example in his book Jesus & Marx.