“The Future Is Real. The Past Is All Made Up.” (Logan Roy)
“Let God be true, and every human being a liar.” (The Apostle Paul, Romans 3:4)
Brian Cox is a brilliant actor, but I suspect he needs some direction when it comes to understanding the Bible. He is angry at the Bible. Cox is raging against the Bible. In a recent interview, he let loose his fury as though gathering up Logan Roy, Agamemnon, and Ward Abbott into a single character, and creating a whirlwind of resentment.
To say Brian Cox is not a fan of the Bible is an understatement.
“The Bible is one of the worst books ever, for me, from my point of view. Because it starts with the idea that out of Adam’s rib, this woman was created, and [people will] believe it cause they’re stupid enough.”
“They’re not dealing with who we are. We’re dealing with, ‘Oh if God says this and God does that,’ and you go, ‘Well what is God?’ We’ve created that idea of God, and we’ve created it as a control issue, and it’s also a patriarchal issue.”
“We have to honor [women], and we have to give them their place and we’re resistant to that because it’s Adam and Eve. I mean, the propaganda goes right way back.”
It’s hard to argue against this cogent line of thought. Stupid people! Yes. all these Bible-believing people are idiotic, intellectual shrimps. What on earth was Augustine ever thinking? It’s all become clear, Aquinas, Isaac Watts, Medal, Faraday, and Calvin aren’t intellectual giants from the past, but shrivelling stupids whose ideas should be ditched. Let’s also add C.S Lewis to the rolls of stupids, and J.S Bach, Wilberforce and more. When I think of the Bible, my mind naturally turns to all those dull-witted Christians in my church with a PhD and even who dare lecture students in our universities: science, law, and philosophy. What about those poor sick people in our cities who are attended to by medical doctors, who give the impression of medical expertise but are secretly carrying a Bible app on their phone?!
Brian Cox, obviously you have a gripe against the Bible, and against God, but calling people stupid on account of their positive view of the Bible is akin to claiming Shakespeare is a third-rate literary hack.
Leaving aside Cox’s erudite assault on Bible-believing men and women, in his performative speech act, the Scottish actor failed to mention several salient points. Or rather, perhaps he is unaware he is plagiarising the words of another.
Let me explain,.
First up, Brian Cox wants to blame the Bible for certain views about men and women, in particular where women are viewed as lesser than men. To be sure, there have been some pretty horrific attitudes toward women in history, including by many of the characters Cox has played over the years. Agamemnon is hardly a model for positive masculinity! While he is letting loose on the Bible, perhaps Cox would like to share what he thinks about how women are treated in Islamic countries or the Hindi practice of Sati?
No sensible person (Christian or not) denies that women haven’t always been given the respect and dignity deserved, even under the guise of Christianity. It is also undeniable that the very notion of female equality and worth is deeply rooted in the Bible, and yes, from its earliest pages in Genesis chs.1 and 2. The very notion of gender equality comes from the Biblical idea of the image dei.
The great egalitarian project is a direct product of the Bible’s anthological vision. As the Apostle Paul wrote almost 2000 years ago,
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
It is this thoroughly Judeo-Christian notion, exemplified in the life of Jesus, that shocked the Roman world and with time, transformed attitudes toward women, the young, the elderly and the most marginalised in society. Historian Tom Holland, explains
‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’
Instead of men using their ‘power’ to subject women and use them for sexual gratification, Christianity taught that sex should be reserved for marriage and that a husband is to follow Christ’s example and lay down his life for his wife. Christianity drew boundaries which began to dismantle mysogeny,
“over the course of the first centuries of Christianity, this understanding of sex eats like a kind of acid through the understanding that the Romans previously had of how sex operates. And over the course of Christian history, the church imposes on believing Christians this sense that being a powerful male does not license you to have multiple wives and concubines. You have to focus on one.”
Sexual restraint was an anti-roman view of the world, and it’s one Tom Holland notes is alive today and whose pushback is anonymously Christian,
But it turns out, as we see now in America, that this idea that free love is a great thing, have sex any way you want, actually turns out to be better for men than for women, because essentially, it’s licences for men to sexually harass their social inferiors. And that’s what the Harvey Weinstein Me Too thing is all about. And, and, in a way, the perfect illustration of this paradox, a kind of moral Mobius Strip, is that when women go on their marches to protest against sexual harassment, many of them will wear red robes and white bonnets.
This is the uniform that they’ve taken from The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, which then became a TV series: a dystopian satire set in a future America that’s become basically fundamentalist Christian. And it’s drawing on the model of Puritan New England. But what is it that these women are demanding? They’re demanding that men become Puritan.”
So Brian Cox is irritated by the Bible even though it is the Bible that gave birth to the glory and value of womanhood.
The irony of Cox’s confessions continues. As I listened to Brian Cox’s rage against the Bible, it’s hard not to notice that he is being incredibly biblical. He’s playing a character from inside the pages of the Scriptures. Even his unbelief is a product of the Bible. Whether it’s Pharaoh or Herod, Cox’s words conform to the pattern of Biblical unbelief. As in the case of Pharaoh, Pharaonic hubris and obstinacy against the God who speaks did little except reinforce what God had spoken.
Cox is also angry about the role religion plays in global violence and unrest. Preach it, Brian! As a Christian, I also find it distressing. Indeed, take a look at the Bible and we’ll find more than a few verses that express God’s anger at human conflict. For a moment, let’s play along Cox’s script and close the Bible for good, as though that were actually possible. Let’s now imagine how peace-loving and egalitarian our world would be…or should tell someone tell him about all those atheistic peace-loving regimes who created utopia for their people: Lenin, Stalin Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. And let’s not forget that bastian of Freedom, North Korea.
Brian, you may well believe everything you have said about the Bible, and if you want to be consistent, then you really ought to reject the very ideas and values that originate in the Bible. I suspect you are not keen to return to the days of ancient Rome or the times of the Trojan War and validate the Agamemnon’s, the Paris’, and Andrew Tate’s of the world?
Religion is problematic and so is its removal. And this is where, Brian Cox, you have greatly misunderstood the Bible.
One of the brilliant things about the Bible is how it does not fit neatly inside any single culture or time. The Bible confronts and comforts, the words on the page astonish and shake, they subvert and heal.
Regardless of how we feel about the Bible, this book is the most extraordinary volume ever written and the work that has had greater influence upon our world today than any other. We might respond with anger, but we cannot ignore it.
I guess I could write a version of the Bible that conforms with every idea and attitude I want validated. It might possible to write a story of the world where I get to define righteousness and truth. But then the Bible would lose its independence, authority, and power. It would turn into one of Logan Roy’s lackeys, rather than the words of a loving Father appealing for reconciliation and offering grace.
The God of the Bible couldn’t be further from the vindictive, spiteful, and manipulative Logan Roy and power abusive Agamemnon. To be sure, the God of the Bible believes in big T truth and a big R righteousness. Do we really want to live in a world without ultimate truth and justice? Accompanying these epistemological and moral necessities is the Bible’s central theme: grace.
I’m preaching this Sunday on a portion of the Bible from the book of Hebrews and there in chapter 9 we come across the idea of inheritance. Receiving the father’s inheritance is not performative or about power, aka Succession, but grace. We might suffer siblings from rivalry, and plot the Father’s downfall as though God’s name is Logan Roy. But the God of grace longs to extend grace and offer as a gift, an inheritance that will never spoil fade or disappoint.
You see, the Bible is about Jesus. Act 1 of the Bible is preparing for and pointing to the coming of God’s only Son. Act 2 reveals the Son. The Bible is about Jesus, and he gets to tell us what God is like.
You may not like the Bible, but at least understand the Bible’s message and how many of our greatest needs, hopes and values, depend upon the promise of these very Scriptures.