A scriptural divination resolved one doubt while deepening another
Evidence
In the final two of the five letters on the fall of Acre, Riccoldo accepts the inscrutable justice of God’s ways. No longer viewing the massacre of Acre’s friars as unjust, he now presents it as the glorious conferral of the crown of martyrdom. His final letter is his description of the “response” he received from God to his first four letters. He was reading Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job and prayed to Gregory, asking why he had received no reply to his letters and insistent prayers. He then heard a voice in his heart saying “Take it and read!”; in obedience to this voice, he opened Gregory’s book and placed his finger on a random passage. Here he read that God does not directly answer the doubts and prayers of each individual, because he has answered them once and for all in Scripture. Riccoldo thanks God for this clear response, yet admits that a doubt remains: he has read in the Bible that sometimes God chastises people as “friends,” in order to make them repent; others he crushes as enemies, as if to begin their eternal punishment in this life. Which is the case, he asks, of the oriental Christians? Are they your friends, receiving a particularly bitter lesson? If so, when will you liberate them from their Saracen oppressors? Or are the oriental Christians rather your enemies? — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1243 (
#exemplifies, via linked claim)
My concern is primarily with a conceptual question: What were the epistemological implications of the different ways that varieties of Christians and freethinkers engaged with the Scriptures through their senses? (Discounting, suppressing, marginalizing one or more of the senses are also, of course, ways of engaging with its materiality.) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 187 (
#expands, via linked claim)
To the modern skeptic (and no doubt to the sixteenthand seventeenth-century skeptic as well) this undeciphered text waiting in the background must appear as a sort of religious blank check, to be filled in when the occasion demanded by those who controlled the process of translation/interpretation. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1266 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Habitual analytic thinking produces and deepens religious doubt; Religion as quest values open-ended doubting over settled answers; Doubt-versus-faith contrasts between religions reflect authorial desire, not scriptural fact — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 139 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- Riccoldo resolved doubt through the sortes biblicae random scripture-opening practice
#exemplifies(1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1243 - Engaging Scripture through the senses has epistemological consequences
#expands(0.95) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 187 - Undeciphered sacred texts function as blank checks for those controlling their interpretation
#complicates(0.80) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1266 - Reformation uncertainty made skepticism and the search for certainty primary
#complicates(0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 763 - Doubting divine inspiration of scripture shifted weight onto historical reliability of the Gospels
#complicates(0.75) - Understanding another faith requires sincere suspension of doubt about its core claims.
#complicates(0.70) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1737 - Religious belief requires intuitive mentalizing about a personal God
#complicates(0.70) - Martí’s apologetic creed exposition answered the Islamic charge of scriptural falsification before teaching doctrine
#complicates(0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1208 - Priming intuitive thinking temporarily raises belief in God.
#complicates(0.70) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 602