Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity
Take no prisoners!, February 16, 2015
By Laura Knight-Jadczyk
This review is from: The Case Against The Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel (Paperback)
I wholeheartedly agree with a previous reviewer that reading Robert Price's work is like sitting in a university classroom and getting a SERIOUS eduction on Biblical scholarship from lower, textual criticism, to higher form and historical criticism. You just have to LOVE Price for the efforts he puts forth to truly empower the reader with knowledge. If you haven't read his other works, especially "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" and "The Amazing Colossal Apostle", they, too are highly recommended.
I would like to add a few things to other excellent reviews that occurred to me as I read this book. Obviously, Prof. Price does not suffer fools gladly; just as obviously, he wishes to make sure that innocent, gullible people are not taken advantage of by the snake-oil salesmen he exposes in his total body of work, including face-to-face debates. That being said, I think that some might be put off by this passion and the occasional over-the-top acidity that spills from Price's pen (or keyboard, as the case may be). Price is clearly passionate about Truth and, in this sense, he actually reminds me of the Apostle Paul in character. His emotional investment in the work he does is clear and you just have to love someone who cares that much.
I have to say I almost fell out of my chair at the end of Chapter Six, facetiously entitled: "A Butt Load of Evidence". Now there's a double (even triple) entendre if ever there was one! You have to read it to really appreciate it! The upshot of it all is (no double entendre or pun intended by me!) is Price's remarks about the very odd combination of homophobia and homoerotica prevalent among fundamentalist Christians. He writes:
"Here is a devotional style that demands its adherents cultivate feelings of emotional adoration and tender cherishing for a fellow male figure. It makes a kind of symbolic sense for nuns to imagine themselves as being engaged to Christ - but for men? How absolutely fascinating that the muscular Christianity of the Promise Keepers and of fundamentalist men everywhere creates and shapes romantic feelings in men for a man. It might even help account for fundamentalist homophobia as a reaction formation against the implicit homoeroticism to which their 'personal relationship with Christ' commits them."
In a footnote, Price cites Philip M. Helfaer's "The Psychology of Religious Doubt": "Generally, homosexual feelings and fantasies, and feminine submissive longings, can be channeled into the relationship with God. Various forms of 'witnessing' and evangelizing .. are also common channels for homosexual libido. The man's intense love for Jesus may be a homosexual, narcissistic object choice, sometimes overriding any other object choice in the individual's life."
As a former fundie myself, and formerly married to one (I escaped, he didn't), I think I can 'testify' to this observation as being pretty darn insightful.
In respect of Price's "take no prisoners" approach, I understand it, truly, but I wonder if it would not be more useful to consider the work of Canadian clinical psychologist, Bob Altemeyer such as "Amazing Conversions" and "The Authoritarians" when trying to deal with fundies? They are not only victims of their programming, they don't have the physiological brain resources to extricate themselves from the trap. It's like the Dunning-Kruger Effect writ very, very large: "If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is." David Dunning This pretty much supports Altemeyer's conclusions in "Amazing Conversions", which suggest that the true believers who cling to their belief no matter what, are lacking in both intellectual capacity and life-skill mastery - which may be related. Thus, taking that perspective, one understands what is "wrong" with such people, but of course, that doesn't help anyone when such people rise to positions of prominence and are able to psychologically mutilate others by means of their pathological persistence in error.
In conclusion, I can echo Prof. Price's conclusion: "I once believed and used the arguments I attack root and branch in this book. I most certainly did not mount an attack from without. No, I was a soldier on the front lines who was horrified to discover I was only firing blanks. And these blanks proved ironically fatal once they backfired. That was the end of my faith."
The end of Price's faith was the beginning of a great work for the rest of us. I, for one, am grateful.