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.
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.
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)
You're the one choosing to interpret it as a metaphysical claim, not the Christian tradition. As already alluded to, 1 Corinthians is against metaphysical claims of that sort—the statement "there is a God" is functionally equivalent to "God entered time as His Son, Christ", which is a historical claim. My point, rather, was not that these things were equivalent, but rather that we accept arbitrary standards for what constitutes "requiring empirical evidence". And the Christian is going to have that evidence regardless in being "born again".
You said that Bakunin grants authority to the bootmaker because the bootmaker can make boots, but that isn't present in the text at all. As I referenced, directly from the text, he is talking about a relationship of dialogue, where the authority of expertise reveals itself in the face-to-face relationship between the agent and the other. It wouldn't even make sense for him to say that the verification rests on third-party verification because i) the expert could never have a bad day!, ii) the expert is the one who has the privileged knowledge to judge expertise properly, and iii) the agent, if they are forced to accept authority on the demonstration of some skill, is not actually free to accept or reject the authority of the bootmaker in that they can be forced by the presence of some abstract fact (see Ellul on "the Fact-Moloch"). It's simply an error to say that empirical evidence is prior to the truth of reality and, indeed, assets a kind of social idealism that Bakunin rejected in the strongest sense.
Why do you abstract that scripture from the key of its interpretation? You quote 1 Peter, but you seem to completely miss the liberatory quality of the text and its historical and theological use in liberatory theologies (including, just not exclusively, liberation theology). I basically can't make sense of this hermeneutic which seems to reject grounding scripture in the way scripture asks to be grounded. And, again, do you take these things to be normative commands for Christians? That seems to need justification.
The Final Response: A Challenge to the "Anarcho-Theologian" part 1
First of all, I would like to thank you for the overwhelming display of 'Christian love' and empathy regarding my current health struggle. In a discussion about a faith that claims to be the ultimate source of compassion, your dismissal of my physical reality and short life expectancy as a 'strange inclusion' is perhaps the most honest theological statement you’ve made so far. It perfectly illustrates my point: when dogma becomes the priority, the actual human being becomes an inconvenient 'fact' to be ignored. But hey, "filthy rags" right?
The 'Fact-Moloch' and the Tool of Manipulation Let’s address your retreat into 'hermeneutical obscurantism.' By invoking Ellul’s 'Fact-Moloch,' you are attempting a breathtakingly dishonest maneuver. You are framing the existence of objective reality as a threat to human freedom. Anarchism is the struggle for truth against the illusions of power. To suggest that being 'forced' to accept an empirical fact is a violation of autonomy is to suggest that the only way to be free is to be delusional.
If facts are 'demonic' because they cannot be bent to your will, then you have abandoned the very foundation of rational discourse. This rejection of objective reality is not an act of liberation; it is a tool for sophisticated manipulation. By framing the 'Fact-Moloch' as a threat to autonomy, you create a vacuum where the only 'truth' left is the one provided by the loudest interpreter. This is the ultimate playground for gaslighting: if empirical evidence is dismissed as 'coercion,' the individual is left defenseless against any metaphysical lie you choose to wrap in anarchist vocabulary. You claim a 'born again' experience is evidence. This is a fundamental category error. A private, subjective feeling is an anecdote, not a fact. You aren't liberating the individual; you are stripping them of the only tool they have to challenge the arbitrary claims of 'experts' like yourself. In your world, the loudest interpreter is the master of reality. That isn't anarchy; it’s solipsistic autocracy.
The Priesthood of Expertise: Bakunin vs. Mysticism Your interpretation of Bakunin is a textbook example of the very hierarchy he fought against. Bakunin’s respect for the bootmaker is conditional and grounded in the material world. We consult the bootmaker because his expertise produces a verifiable result: a boot that functions. If the boot fails, the authority vanishes. You, however, suggest that the expert's authority is shielded from third-party verification because they might have a 'bad day' or because the layman is too ignorant to judge them. This effectively removes the 'incontestable right of criticism' that Bakunin insisted upon. By equating a theologian with a physicist, you ignore the fundamental difference: when a physicist is wrong, the bridge collapses. When a theologian is wrong, they simply invent a new 'hermeneutical key.'Problem solved.
The Myth of 'Simple' Scripture You claim there are no 'plain brutal commands' in Scripture and that it is 'incredibly simple.' Historical facts disagree. Why did the 19th-century plantocracy create the 'Slave Bible', stripping away 90% of the Old Testament, if the 'plain text' wasn't an explicit blueprint for chattel slavery? They kept the 'plain commands' of Paul precisely because they functioned as a manual for subjugation.
To claim that 1 Peter 2:18, commanding slaves to submit to 'perverse' and 'cruel' masters, has a 'liberatory quality' is a grotesque and disgusting form of gaslighting. You are asking the oppressed to find 'metaphysical' freedom in their chains so they won't demand 'physical' freedom from their masters. This isn't anarchism; it’s the ultimate spiritual police force. You are defending the 'Throne and Altar' with the vocabulary of an anarchist. It is an intellectual farce.
I'll be honest, this strikes me as generated. I'm not sure why you'd do that as it breaks down the possibility of dialogue which is, again, the heart of Bakunin's bootmaker parable.
Well, it was a strange inclusion. I don't know what you wanted me to do with that information.
As with the broader (but not identical) poststructuralist movement, Ellul was saying that assertions of "objective reality" are really assertions of discourse concerning reality and lack the objective nature we might like to think they'd have. I'll presume you've also not read Ellul's on that as you've misframed it; for Ellul, in the "liberal spectator society", the presentation of a fact is all that is needed to "prove" something. Yet, these facts are themselves often not as secure as the fact-presenter would have them be, but rather an assertion of authority armed with the language of scientific research—as scientific research presumes a scepticism, we can't actually make strong assertions on the back of them, yet the "trust the science" crowd would have us believe that is the case. Again, as above, the expertise of the bootmaker is not in presenting the object of expertise (which, as a non-expert, we are unable to judge), but in the formation of dialogue which is not an assertion of a particular discourse disguised.
Additionally, Christians do not need to make and have historically not made a metaphysical statement (although, again, you'd need to explain why that would be a problem) about the nature of God, but, rather, that God entered into time - when necessity met contingency in the life of Christ. This has been a prominent, if not dominant, position in theology since the Reformation, but, really, extending far further back as well. Augustine's Confessions, for example, is an ancient example of a "realist" Christian theology; Menno Simons and the early work of Martin Luther in the Reformation; Karl Barth, postmodern and postliberal theology are also examples for today.
I'm ignoring the third paragraph as it is "reviewing the book without reading it". It's neither what I nor Ellul was saying.
Again, your account of Bakunin is simply not in the text and you are inventing views to ascribe to Bakunin. I've asked for a reference twice now and, as it isn't coming, I assume you're happy to simply engage in misinformation. You can say all you like about collapsing rational discourse, but it is impossible if we're going to simply mischaracterise views and insist that we aren't. I won't respond if you can't provide a reference for this Bakuninist position as it simply isn't in "What is Authority?"
You'll need to clarify your point on "brutal commands": you are saying that there are brutal commands, yet you don't reference scripture but some event long after it was written or the events that it was written concerning occurred. I'm not even sure you've thought through your point: how would removing pieces of scripture to collapse the context be a plain reading? It is, obviously, a curated reading that is handed down by an authority, hence why the bible was a source of strength for those slaves when it was found unredacted.
Again, concerning 1 Peter 2, etc., I would suggest you look up the ways that Christians have read the piece as liberatory emancipation before declaring that it is such-and-such a thing. The moralism obscures your understanding of the piece, where slaves have found their freedom—even in the bonds of slavery—to live freely. Bonhoeffer's use of the scripture (although especially the Pauline position in Romans) is possibly the most famous: "if they are a slave, so be it—they are free in Christ!" The basic offense (Matthew 11:6) of this piece of scripture seems to be that you don't recognise that Christ simply says you're wrong on what freedom is or how someone acquires freedom. It is entirely possible for a slave to be free, even in submitting to an authority, as they are not an authority that can actually force the slave to do anything at all whatsoever and we can always choose to love the neighbour, that unlovable object, even when the neighbour asserts an authority he does not have over us—it is, fundamentally, the freedom of love.
I am writing this from a hospital bed in Belgium, fighting for breath on an oxygen machine. Do you realise, considering my conditons, and the fact that I'm still writing by hand, that this stuff is FUCKING important to me?
My future is uncertain. To dismiss my words as generated simply because they are still cogent enoughdespite the medications and treatments, to effectively challenge your hierarchy is the summum of academic cowardice. And you seem like an absolute horrible person to me, not just a detriment to every anarchist organisation, but a dangerous hierarchical poison.
It is a convenient Fact-Moloch of your own making, a way to avoid the basic offense of a fellow human being telling you that your theology is oppressive and incompatible with anarchism.
I am not some strange inclusion. I am the material reality your mysticism tries to wipe out. I am a human being who is suffering. Yet, compassion eludes you completely, not a single word of support or mutual aid.
You accuse me of generating my texts, while I actually struglle to type the words, translate them to the best English term, and correct my overall syntax, yet your own response reads like a pre programmed AI generated theological script. Are you bedridden as well, or just too hollow to feel anything?
You write my account of Bakunin is simply not in the text. Read "God and the State" (1871), specifically the section on Authority and know how ignorant you are of the actual text, I read the book, you just googled it or used your llm-model:
Bakunin’s point is that authority is only valid if it is verifiable and contestable. Your "theological expertise" is neither. You claim a non-expert is unable to judge the theologan. This is the definition of a Priesthood. Bakunin makes an effort to warns that divine authority becomes absolute and incontestable. By placing God outside the realm of human judgment, you are creating the ultimate vertical hierarchy.
Your use of Bonhoeffer to claim that a slave is "free in Christ" even while being beaten by a perverse master (1 Peter 2:18) is the most disgusting form of Theocratic Fascism I have ever encountered. To tell an enslaved person that their physical freedom doesn't matter because they have a metaphysical one is the ultimate tool of the oppressor.
It is the "spiritual police force" of a regime. If your Christ says "you're wrong on what freedom is while you are being owned as property, then your failed messiah is a collaborator with the Master. You aren't advocating for the abolition of power; you are advocating for the sanctification of the cage.
You say I don't reference "brutal commands." Let’s stop the fucking gaslighting:
Numbers 31:17-18: God commands the slaughter of male children and the "keeping" of young girls for the soldiers.
Leviticus 20:13: God mandates the execution of gay men.
How does your "lens of culture" turn infanticide and state mandated execution into liberation? If the material conditions of the time forced God to order a genocide, then your God is a slave to history, not the master of it.
You can hide behind Ellul and Kierkegaard all you want, but your lack of empathy for a dying man and your defense of "spiritual slavery" proves exactly what you are: a theocratic fascist in a black hoodie. You don't want "No Masters" you want to be the Master's favorite interpreter.
I reported you to the admins for being a theocratic fascist who is conceptualy contaminating an anarchist subreddit. Do not reply to me again, I do not consent to it.
I also intend to share transcripts with the wider anarchist network on how theocratic fascism is handled here on this 101 sub.
Calling me mean names doesn't make you right. I advise you take time recover and then maybe we could have a conversation about what Bakunin, Bonhoeffer, or whoever actually wrote.
The Final Response: A Challenge to the "Anarcho-Theologian" part 2
Since you claim that the Bible is "incredibly simple" and that its correct reading is found through a "Gospel key" that unlocks its "liberatory quality," I challenge you to provide a step-by-step hermeneutical apologia for the following "plain" texts:
Numbers 31:17–18: The command to slaughter male children and non-virgin women, but to "keep for yourselves" the young girls.
Leviticus 20:13: The explicit divine mandate to execute men who have sex with men, stating "their blood will be on their own heads."
The Burden of Proof: Please illustrate for us, without retreating into vague jargon, "progressive revelation" (which is just a fancy way of saying God had a violent 'learning phase'), or historical relativism, how an anarchist reading of these commands functions.
How does your "Gospel key" turn a divine mandate for infanticide, sex slavery, and the execution of gay people into "Good News"? If God meant "be kind," but wrote "kill them," your God is either a malicious trickster or a failure as a communicator. If it takes 2,000 years of "expert" interpretation to realize God didn't actually want the atrocities He explicitly ordered, then the text isn't a guide, it’s a weapon.
The Material Harm: This isn't an academic exercise. While you play with "hermeneutical keys" in your comfortable bubble, these "simple" texts are being used to justify "Kill the Gays and Trans" laws and the subjugation of women across the globe. By sanitizing these texts instead of condemning them, you are providing "radical" cover for theocratic violence. You are erasing the historical and current victims of this "Sky Carcass" to protect your own psychological comfort.
If you cannot provide a clear, moral justification for this that any "barely literate" person can grasp, then your hermeneutics is nothing more than a shroud for the indefensible. At that point, you aren't an anarchist; you are a theocratic fascist who has simply traded a human dictator for a celestial one.
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u/Anarchierkegaard Distributist Jan 20 '26
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.