Susan Wise Bauer strikes back

Well, Susan Wise Bauer had gone silent on the Peter Enns commotion in her life. Now she's produced a four-part essay that brushes up against the controversy just enough - subject matter-wise - to let us know it is her answer to all her critics; and a bold one it is (she isn't backing down, by God), yet it is possibly the dumbest piece of writing one could encounter outside, I suppose, the hard drive of an atheist internet forum troll.

Susan is obviously digesting conversations she's had with Enns, perhaps at the dinner table, face flushed with wine, and this essay is some of the result of her digesting:

Disappearing Words, Part I: The Bad News

Disappearing Words, Part II: What exactly are we worried about?

III. Wrong assumptions

Disappearing Words, Part IV: What do we do about it?

+ + +

Ok, I'll write some notes by way of critique...

Susan Wise Bauer's initial thoughts on writing this essay: "Well, my critics on the internet are unwashed morons, but I can't say that, it would hurt my reputation in the homeschooling mom's cult, but I am a professor at William & Mary, so this is how I will deal with all this criticism I've been receiving, people calling me dumb and whatnot... I'm going to take some very erudite themes I've picked up from my friend Peter Enns and I am going to combine them with some thoughts I have about the written word and the evolution of the various mediums of the word and culture and so on, throw in a lot of that type of stuff, and the mix of the two is going to so explode the simple moronic brains of my unwashed critics they will know to back off when it comes to criticizing me. OK, so..."

Well, this hybrid is a bit strained. Susan has obviously been thinking about her main theme (the disappearing word), for longer than the history of this current controversy regarding Peter Enns, collecting many books on the subject, digesting them, and so on. But combining it all with Peter Enns' ideas about the word of God has caused it to further expose her really rather astonishing ignorance of the Bible and biblical doctrine. (Remember, she's also a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary. Though she wants you to know she doesn't identify as Reformed. Which is not surprising, considering she's a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, ha ha, ahem. She, though, probably doesn't even know what Reformed means. I suspect she went through WTS in some sort of catatonic state.)

How to critique this essay? Like I said, it's sort of a mutant hybrid. It goes off the tracks in more than just a linear way. It like splays off the tracks in different directions, including into the ground.

Hmm, as I write this I'm debating rereading the whole thing or just going off memory of my first reading. I really - really - don't want to reread the whole thing.

Basically, Susan, whether we like it or not, Christianity is a bit of a demanding enterprise. It, like it or not, is a religion of the Book. Line upon line... study to make yourself approved, all that. You can't be a common dope and be a Christian. At least not stay that way. Tyndale's famous plough boy knew how to read. Christianity raises the bar, it doesn't despair that a bar has to be raised. It raises the bar just being what it is. Once the Spirit gets to work there's a compulsion to not remain ignorant. At least if the threat of torture and death is taken off the table. But even then we are talking of a remnant. God always has His remnant. Remnant Christianity is not establishment Christianity, or Christendom.

No, Susan, you can't learn of the Gospel through images. You can't stare at a crucifix or a stained glass window and learn of justification and adoption and so on. There is general revelation and there is special revelation. The written word of God - the Old and New Testaments - are special revelation par excellence. Yes, the incarnated Jesus is special revelation as well, but He has resurrected. His miracles were special revelation, but they exist for us in the living word (which refers to the written word of God, by the way, Susan, not the living Jesus Christ). The word of God is a living word, it regenerates. Potentially.

No, Susan, it is not true that images are not inferior to words in carrying meaning. (One of Susan's main notions is that images are not inferior to the written word, and she makes that argument even to the extent of saying that you don't need the written word to be a Christian, i.e. that images alone are enough. Like I said, this essay is so dumb it's even hard to know how to critique it.)

I'm just going off memory because I really didn't want to slog through her essay again...

Throughout the essay it's obvious that Susan sees the Bible as just mere 'words', and that Christianity is really about Jesus Christ and not words. She also accuses, through third parties, Protestant Christians of making the words of the Bible into idols. Understand, she is not making the common accusation of bibliolatry, that Protestants worship the actual physical book of the Bible itself rather than its contents, she is making the accusation that Protestant Christians worship the actual words as false idols because they think you need those words to be a Christian when she says you don't need them. You just need...images, for instance. Or whatever. Her argument is accompanied by the lament that not all people have the ability to read and have the advantages, throughout history, that we of the west have, you see.

She also makes the statement that the Reformation had nothing to do with New Testament Christianity. I.e. that the Reformation had nothing to do with going back to the source, apostolic biblical doctrine. This exposes her ignorance of history, ironically. History being her strong point, supposedly.

She defends her thesis with a total misreading of the second commandment (and in fact whenever she draws on Scripture her readings are pretty batty, for instance, in belittling us westerners in our fears of the end of the book and hence of Christianity she draws on the apocalypse imagery of Peter and says, no, when your little culture dies it won't mean the end of the world, it will be like Peter says and you will just have to survive in a post-apocalypic scenario with images to guide you in your faith as much as that may be distasteful to you, get use to it. I kid you not, she makes that argument.)

There's really no overall meaning in the essay to critique because it's such an unnatural hybrid. As a response, though, to her critics regarding the Peter Enns affair it is interesting and further exposes her as a rather ignorant and arrogant - supposedly well-educated - fool...my conscience is stung, I don't like being too hard on her. She's a hard worker, and she really is not doing a lot of damage such as false teachers do (publishing Peter Enns aside). She's like a school teacher. The little one room school house, that type of thing. And in that realm she would make a very good teacher, methinks...