Serpents and First Principles

I know, I know... Two posts in one month.  If I keep this up I might set myself up for disappointment.  But this is an easy post because it is actually an email that I sent to a former student yesterday. He attends UCSD and is in their literature program. It is a sort of Great Books type of deal and right now they are going through John Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost. He professor was challenging the class to prove that the Serpent in Genesis is actually Satan. My former student cited the texts in Revelation 12 and 20, along with John 8 and 2 Corinthians but the professor insisted that in order for it to be reliable it had to have come from Moses himself within the text of the book of Genesis. This whole email conversation was forwarded to me and this was my response:

It sounds like your professor's problem is that he is a hopeless Modernist. Is there are place in Genesis that says, "The Serpent is Satan?" No. But in all of literature (and God is the greatest Author of the greatest piece of Literature), when things like serpents keep popping up in terms of deceit, lying and being crushed under a foot, one time is a coincidence, two times may be intentional, but anything over 3 and the author is grabbing your shoulders and giving you a hearty shake.

Think of any excellent piece of film or literature and this exact technique is used all the time. In Orson Wells' classic movie Citizen Kane the sled "Rosebud" shows up in the beginning of the movie and then frequently reappears throughout the story and finally has its meaning revealed in the end. If the Orson Wells would have directly identified the meaning in the first five minutes, all dramatic tension would be lost and the critics would call it "hokey." I could give you a hundred more examples but what you will see continually is that the Bible is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't with all modern skeptics. If Moses had identified Satan as the Serpent in Genesis, they would have criticized the hokiness and the fact that he didn't makes them criticize the obscurity. Can't win for losin' man. It reminds me of when someone asked Bertrand Russell (famous Atheist) what would be his one question if he died and ended up standing before God. He responded, "I would ask him, 'Sir, why did you go through such pains to hide yourself?'"

On a side note: Let's do a quick thought experiment (a chicken or egg sort of thing) to reveal some of our presuppositions. Consider that there are two men arguing about literary devices in the Bible.... One might say that the Biblical authors are borrowing powerful literary devices (allusion, foreshadowing, etc.) to create what even the most hardened skeptics might call a beautiful piece of literature. The other man might say that the reason these literary devices are so powerful is rooted in the fact that they are God's literary devices as revealed in the Scripture. They are powerful for Shakespeare and Homer because God wove them into the fabric of humanity through His Story, the Story of Redemption and being woven in such a way that they speak to us at the deepest levels. You could have spotted the presuppositions as a freshman in high school so I am sure you see them now.

Now that our presuppositions are revealed lets do a little poking and prodding. I hope you have already asked the question, "Which presupposition have a coherent foundation?" In other words, which make sense all the way back to First Principles. If the first man in our thought experiment were to be challenged with a simple question, "Why are these literary devices so powerful?" He could not give a coherent answer all the way back to First Principles. At some point he would have to say, "They just ARE!" (Ah, the glory of self-authentication) You see, the Modernist will forever be unable to answer why-questions at the deepest levels. Of course, they will condemn us as reductionistic and mystical for answering ultimate why-questions with "God" but I say, "Let them eat cake." Everyone has First Principles so it is not whether but which. Which will be your First Principles, your Uncaused Causes? The Modernist must say Reason and thereby has made Reason his god. The Christian says God and recognizes God for who he is. We can doubt all claims of authenticity but to be consistent we would have to ultimately doubt our doubts. Of course we don't do that (or those who do end up committing suicide) or at least we don't live that way. God is ultimately the only legitimate self-authenticator because He is the only one who has the authority to do so.

Back to the issue of the text of Genesis.

We can always talk about the so-called problem of, "a text of later provenance co-opting an earlier text for its purposes" if we are talking about different authors but the problem is that the Bible is written by a Meta-Author: God. This particular post-modern criticism falls short if God wrote the whole Bible. In fact, in spite of the numerous different authors from a variety of backgrounds, we manage to have a perfectly cohesive piece of literature, full of all the things that you would expect in a piece of literature.

In the end, your professor is looking at it all wrong. He is looking at the Bible as if it is a compilation of many texts when if fact it is much more than that. It is One Text from Genesis to Revelation. It is telling One Story. It just happens to have been recorded over the course of 1500 years by 40 different authors. Fun stuff.

I also think that the serpent in Genesis 3 was a dragon. Maybe that'll help. On second thought, maybe not.

And of course to the (paraphrased) question, "Why do we need to say the serpent was Satan? Is salvation at stake?" My answer: For some it is.

What I mean is that some say it is not Satan so that they don't have to believe, and some say it isn't Satan so they can believe. Those in the first category are the ungodly, and are damned. Those in the second category are mistaken Christians.

This is a fundamental worldview question that I am glad you are wrestling with. Questions like, " Do I really have to believe ___________________ to be a Christian?" can be both good and bad things depending on your commitment to your First Principles. Hopefully those have been properly vetted so that you are actually working with something. Nothing is more frustrating and pointless than arguing about issues without having cognitive awareness of your own presuppositions.

Hope this helps.

Hervey

P.S. and don't be intimidated by the Greek talk as if it is going to reveal some "special knowledge." Gnosticism failed in the 5th Century.