A Matter of Scholarship
Someone by the name of Steve Jackson has written a “review” of Loving Life at Amazon.com challenging some of my scholarship in the book. For those who might be interested, I would like here to address a couple of his allegations and set the record straight.
I will begin with Jackson’s claim that I quoted the church father Tertullian out of context. Says Jackson: “Mr. Biddle takes Tertullian’s famous statement ‘it is to be believed… because it is absurd’ out of context. [P. 16.] Tertullian wasn’t arguing against critics of religious dogma, but rather against the arguments of Gnostic heretic Marcion.”
To establish some context, and to correct Jackson’s misquote, here is the paragraph from Loving Life containing the quote and citation in question:
Thus, the more religious a person is, the more he has to try to defend contradictions. Such an effort is by nature frustrating, because contradictions are by nature indefensible. This is why the staunchest defenders of religion say the nuttiest things. For instance, while responding to criticisms of the illogic of religious dogma, the outspoken church father Tertullian finally declared: “It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd…. The fact is certain, because it is impossible.”1
The reason why I cited via footnote in Loving Life the actual writings of Tertullian was so that the curious reader could check the original source in its full context for himself. Jackson, apparently, has not done so.
Below is a link to Tertullian’s writings on the web where you can read the relevant passage and judge for yourself whether I quoted him out of context. Follow the link and scroll down to Chapter V, “Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion’s Docetic Parody of the Same.” Read the whole chapter; it is only one long paragraph (but too densely footnoted to reproduce here).
Tertullian certainly was responding to criticisms of the illogic of religious dogma. Marcion had argued that it is irrational to believe that Christ had been resurrected. Tertullian’s argument is that if Christians deny Christ’s resurrection on the grounds that it is irrational to accept it, then Christianity is doomed. The Bible is full of impossible events and contradictions; if Christians reject one biblical idea on the grounds that it is irrational, then they have to reject all the irrational ideas in the Bible. If it is false that Christ was resurrected, writes Tertullian: “False, therefore, is our faith also.” So he takes the bull by the horns: “[T]he Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.”
Granted, that is a bizarre way to respond to criticisms of the illogic of religious dogma, but that is what Tertullian was doing. It just goes to show what religion can do to one’s mind.
I will now turn to Jackson’s claim that I used an illegitimate source for one of my quotes from Hitler. Again, to provide context, here is the relevant passage from Loving Life (page 40):
Hitler did not fear religion or faith; he feared reason and logic. He saw the Church not as an enemy but as a mentor, because of its remarkable ability to get people to believe in a creed full of contradictions. Here, in his own words, is Hitler acknowledging his heartfelt debt to religion:
The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.2
The source of that quote is a book titled The Voice of Destruction by Hermann Rauschning, who was the leader of the Nazi party in Danzig in the early 1930s. According to Rauschning, the book is based on conversations he had with Hitler “in the last year before his seizure of power and the first two years (1933 and ’34) of the National Socialist regime.”3 Says Jackson:
Mr. Biddle quotes from Hermann Rauschning’s alleged talks with Adolf Hitler. [P. 40.] The authenticity of Rauschning’s quotations from Hitler is generally denied. Hitler’s definitive biographer Ian Kershaw does not make use of the Rauschning material. [See Kershaw, HITLER, vol 1, p. xiv.] Richard Steigmann-Gall calls the material “highly questionable” and says it shouldn’t be used. [THE HOLY REICH, p. 29.]
So, according to Jackson, because the authenticity of Rauschning’s quotations is “generally denied”—and because Hitler’s “definitive biographer” does not use this source—and because Richard Steigmann-Gall says it shouldn’t be used—I therefore shouldn’t use it? There is an appropriate label for people who think and argue this way (conveniently, I discuss it in Chapter 6 of Loving Life, which Jackson would do well to read again—this time with the standing order to think rather than to “refute”).
I am, of course, aware of the controversy surrounding Rauschning’s book. There are several scholars who claim that some of its content was fabricated. But a) this has not, to my knowledge, been demonstrated, and b) these facts remain: Rauschning was a leader in the Nazi party; he did have conversations with Hitler; and the quotes he ascribes to Hitler do comport with other things that we know Hitler said, wrote, and did. In light of these supporting facts, and since I have not seen any rational evidence to suggest that Rauschning’s book is an invalid source for quotes from Hitler, I have good reason to believe that it is a valid source for them. If anyone has genuine evidence to the contrary—and neither mere assertions nor appeals to authority qualify as evidence—then I would like to see it. If not, then any claim that the source is invalid is an arbitrary claim and thus itself invalid.
So much for Jackson’s attacks on the scholarship in Loving Life.
In addition to those attacks, and on top of his attempt at intimidation and his brazen ad hominem in the second paragraph of his “review,” Jackson makes sundry other assertions against Loving Life. But since each of these is an exercise in dropping context or ignoring examples or failing to think in terms of essentials, and since this will be obvious to anyone who reads the book with an active mind, I will not address these here.
Unfortunately, a dishonest review like Jackson’s can dissuade people from buying the book. But what can one do? Amazon provides a wonderful venue for people to write reviews, and while some choose to use it for purposes of truth and justice, others have different aims.
—Craig Biddle, February 2005
www.craigbiddle.com
Copyright ©2005 Craig Biddle
1 The Ante-Nicene Fathers, eds. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), Vol. III, The Writings of Tertullian, p. 525.
2 Adolf Hitler, quoted in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction (New York: Putnam, 1940), pp. 239–40.
3 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. vii.