Regarding the Bible (2)
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB
Scripture– Let’s follow up on yesterday’s lengthy (I apologize) description of the Bible as a book about human encounters with God. Peter Enns adds some important insight:
Seeing God as a character in the story who can be talked to, reasoned with, shows regret, finds out things, and changes his mind can be troubling because it doesn’t sound very much like the sovereign signal-caller of the universe. . . . But this ungodlike God of the Bible gets as the very heart of both Jewish and Christian beliefs about God. This God doesn’t keep his distance but embraces human experience and becomes part of the human story. He is “on the scene” with bracing regularity.[1]
It’s a bit scary, isn’t it? We want a Bible of certainty, a book that we can say, “You see, it says this in the Bible and therefore it must be true.” Of course, what we mean by true is that it is timelessly true; something that isn’t part of the culture in which it was written; something that is eternal and certain and (consequently) abstract! We want the Bible to be a Western religious version of Euclidean geometry. Grant me two parallel lines and I will prove all the rest.
But Enns suggests that we can’t even approach the Messiah in this way.
To see Jesus, you won’t get there by sticking to the script. You will only see Jesus there in hindsight and under the surface, where your reading of the Old Testament is driven by faith in Christ, where Jesus has become the starting point for re-understanding Israel’s story, not the logical conclusion of Israel’s story.[2]
Reading the Bible like this is very different than listening to a lecture on soteriology. But we want the Bible to be lectures on soteriology, because then it is safe. It is controllable.
When we grab hold of “correct” thinking for dear life, when we refuse to let go because we think that doing so means letting go of God, when we dig in our heels and stay firmly planted even when we sense that we need to let go and move on, at that point we are trusting our thoughts rather than God. We have turned away from God’s invitation to trust in order to cling to an idol.[3]
It was so much easier when I thought I had all the answers between those leather covers.
Topical Index: Bible, 2 Timothy 3:16
[1]Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending the Bible Has Made Us Unable to Read It, p. 158.
AH, HAH!
I stayed out of the discussion yesterday because I thought God was sending me a cosmic message. I too have been reviewing Enns work through his writings and his videos. I was drawn in but thought it was so radical that I didn’t feel prepared to share it until I studied every little nuance of what he was proposing.
This has happened before where I stumble on a new vein of thought and it seems like suddenly there were other sources popping up that concurred or at least were aware of this new vein (to me). That happened yesterday when I read similarities to Enns in TW.
Now I know Skip has read what I have and it all makes sense!
It is a cosmic message from God!
Or perhaps a coincidence.
But isn’t that the same?
Enns is a little scary also. I was just starting to get comfortable, after years, not seeing everything through the Christian vein I was indoctrinated into.
Now Enns proposes I leave all of the other ‘influences’ to my understanding behind and understand only one thing…I soon as I get down to that I’ll let you know.
I wrote about Enns books in the past. Some of it is good, some not so good. As with all sources not divine (me included), take what you can, leave the rest.
SHALOM god bless the truth keep up the good work skip, my great friend Tommy Howard talk to me about your way that you obey gods word when it comes to teaching .in our hearts their is a quest for the truth and I watch my mom looking for it until she found it and it gave her peace she enjoyed going to church but never found one that teaches from the grassroots of life .your opening up a lot of souls Godspeed have a bless day. if I do not ever see you here I see you there. it is so amazing how god alerts us to things that are just not the correct way it should be done.has a young child i keep telling myself there is something missing.but never could grasp what it was .lomax
“It was so much easier when I thought I had all the answers between those leather covers.”
IT WAS! And then, Skip….Israel….. Rabbi Bob Gorelik…… these TW’s….. all of it shifting/moving away from who I used to be in ways I NEVER could have imagined…..
Now, I’m less “certain” of what I used to know and more “certain” about where I’ve been rowing and where I am heading…. rowing backwards, of course *wink.
Thanks for ALL of this Skip! I really identify with what you write.
“To see Jesus, you won’t get there by sticking to the script. You will only see Jesus there in hindsight and under the surface, where your reading of the Old Testament is driven by faith in Christ, where Jesus has become the starting point for re-understanding Israel’s story, not the logical conclusion of Israel’s story.” There is the new paradigm.
Skip, you point out that prophecy is NOT understood by the original audience. It is there primarily so that when it does happen, we can know that God is true. It has been argued by better folks than me that all of the OT is there to unfold a picture of Messiah; but, arguably, Israel could not see themselves as a giant allegory of the life, purpose, mission of Christ until He came. The NT explodes as its writers subsequently place the OT prophecies about the Messiah in their true light – their true paradigm. If we continue to do that today – even if we get it wrong sometimes – we learned it from them.
The Jews committed all those mistakes you point out above, and more, with their Scriptures, too, and continue to this day to do so. They were no more immune to Hellenism than we have been, after all. We have learned it from the best. They were the best, but when the best goes bad, it goes very, very bad. (Us, too.)
I agree it is time to start again with Scripture, but when we do, let us not, I pray, make the pendulum mistake this dialectic has set us up for, to just go do the ‘opposite’ (whatever we think that may be), but instead seek and find all the split-apart pieces and put them back together. I believe we will know when we get there because Messiah will be clear and living and there will be nothing in between us and Him in those pages; so help us, God.
Beautiful!…. “but instead seek and find all the split-apart pieces and put them back together.” When I read the Apocrypha of the Patriarchs that’s what I was left with. As each prepared for their ‘return to the dust’ all the family gathered around, from the very young to the old and listened to the ‘big/lifetime’ confession/repentance. As I read each one, my emotions idled very high. Who could stop my tears? Who would comfort me? This, all of this, was about me. The split-apart pieces from each confession were the bits and pieces of my own life’s experiences of brokenness. The teaching, learning… the sensation I was sitting among all those family members… as a witness. Such humility! And as time would have it these beautiful testimonies from God’s chosen were placed outside and relegated to just a ‘story’. I beg to differ!
A word of caution. The writers of the apostolic material made the connections to Messianic verses in the Tanakh only AFTER they had experiences with Yeshua, and actually after he died and rose again. They didn’t have any more insight into the “true” meaning of the text then anyone else at the time. They just saw the text differently. They actually make connections that were NOT in the text, altering the original meanings to fit their new vision. In other words, because they adopted a different paradigm, they were able to see things in ways that other didn’t. But does this mean they saw the TRUE meaning of the text? I’m not so sure about that. They saw a meaning which you see, but does that make it the true meaning. Or is it rather a matter of paradigm assumptions. After all, all these authors play fast and loose with the text to make it say what they want it to say. That doesn’t mean they were wrong to do this, but it certainly can’t mean that those who didn’t follow their paradigm are not seeing the “true” meaning.
Lots of room for mysteries in this stuff and that leads to the “Wonderful”. Laurita nailed it yesterday “what is truth”…Yeshua!
Truth becomes meaningless if we start, continue or conclude from any other point other than Yeshua. He is the very embodiment of reality for us. Nobody can even breathe or think without His continuous intervention (grace) in a very practical way. Far more practical than any propositional Greek would ever like to admit. Truth in the air or head? Great! Truth under the fingernails and in all the nitty-gritty of life? WHAT?!
I appreciate what you write – a lot. I am sure you know that. But I think here you have restricted truth to a spiritual box. Certainly knowing Yeshua or not knowing Yeshua has little to do with the truth of Special Relativity Theory or with the development of epigenetics. For you personally, and for many others, the truth about living in conscious relationship with God may be facilitated through Yeshua, but that is not the limit of all that is true, and his statement (I am the truth) was not intended to encompass theories of gravity, Cantor’s proof of infinite sets or the double helix arrangement. Yeshua spoke to a particular generation of men with particular cultural ideas and expectations. Truth in his terms is circumscribed by these considerations.
I love and respect you, too, Skip, but I fail to see how the double helix is not intimately connected to life in a very real way, whether anybody ‘understands’ it or that relationship or not! Yeshua may not have explained gravity, but why do you assume it has NOTHING to do with Him? Aren’t you the one trying to box ‘spiritual’ separate from ‘physical’ now?
There may be eternal realities that are extraterrestrial, but truth on this planet, anyway, exists at all because our planet’s existence has been renegotiated and put on a new basis. Grace is holding all our sinful breaths in all our bodies so as to give us fair choices. The planet is being held together in a very physical way by that grace while we get that chance, for if it were up to us and our choices, all life as we know it would have ceased long ago, and that would be a double helix problem, too, I highly suspect.
Amen, Laurita…… “He himself is before all things, and all things are held together IN HIM” Col 1:17
The point of the last two days’ articles on the Bible is (to be as blunt as possible) that the Bible is a collection on sacred material recognized by an ancient community as critically important for matters concerning relationship with God. That claim is part of a paradigm. It is NOT intuitively obvious (like the fingers on your hand are intuitively obvious) (a little aside to G E Moore for those among us who are philosophers). The paradigm determines the relevance of the claim and the conditions by which this claim is judged as true. Of course, that doesn’t mean it is ENTIRELY arbitrary. It just means that the idea of what is TRUE is determined in part by the initial paradigm. You have adjusted your idea of what is true to the paradigm claims found in the Bible. There are justifiable reasons for this, but that doesn’t imply that your claims are the only truth claims one could make about the Bible or that these claims are, ipso facto, the only TRUTH in the universe. So when you suggest that Yeshua is the basis for claims about the theory of gravitation, you are merely extending your paradigmatic view to realms beyond the scope of the text. This is legitimate, of course, WITHIN the paradigm you have adopted, but that doesn’t mean it is the only way to read the text. Religious language is just ONE language game of many. It might be internally consistent, it might explain reality from its own perspective, but it still depends on basic a priori assumptions. I am interested in examining those a prior assumptions. So whether or not Yeshua’s claim has relevance to the theory of gravitation is really not important here since the issue of relevance is secondary to the question about HOW we read the text (that is, what assumptions we bring to the text). It strikes me as a bit closed-minded to suggest that unless one recognizes Yeshua (as divine?), one cannot really grasp TRUTH. That might be paradigmatically certain, but it is still paradigm dependent.
“…unless one recognizes Yeshua (as divine?), one cannot really grasp TRUTH” (Skip). I don’t think I said that. Nowhere have I suggested that doctrinal certainty (or even knowledge of Yeshua) has anything to do with His function in reality. Anybody who responds to love “knows” (experiences) the truth, even if they never heard of Yeshua, but that, ipso facto, does not ‘prove’ that Yeshua had nothing to do with that love. Grace operates for all of us, independent of whether we know to acknowledge that fact or not.
“letting go of paradigms”… someone once told me that’s near impossible for humans. The baggage we carry from generation to generation, then loaded up with our own bricks on our backs, slows us to a snail’s crawl and we all know what a snail does when anything touches it… withdrawal. However, in an attempt better grasp what you are pointing to Skip, it’s the holding on to paradigms that bogs me down. Not frozen but not fluid either. Yeshua only did what the Father told him. And Yeshua could walk through angry, violent crowds, heal with a thought and touch, raise the dead, and more than we could possibly list. Yeshua’s paradigm wasn’t of this realm. It was of the Kingdom of Righteousness. Now where do I begin? Through emotions and uncovering all levels of brokenness, down to my core being I may be able to “let go of paradigms”. I realize that’s simply put, but for brevity sake… I hope this isn’t too lopsided to understand.
perfectly understandable, and I empathize. But somehow I think we are all sort of missing the point here. Perhaps we are so anxious to make sure we don’t attribute anything human to our God-man that we go out of the way to make sure we don’t say anything about him that would appear to make him just like us. But I ask you, on this subject only, is it really possible to claim that Yeshua was the Jewish Messiah and not, at the same time, imply that he was as much a part of his historical setting, culture and paradigms as the rest of the first century Jews he chose to be involved with. Yes, of course, there are differences. He was fully upright before God. He was excruciatingly dedicated to his mission. He did things that only a man under complete surrender to YHVH could do. But does that mean he was even part of the paradigm of this world? Careful now. If you really want to go in that direction, you will soon fall into docetism.
Fair enough. I’m not advocating Gnostic beliefs for sure! Trying to uncover what you are saying by probing the subject. Not just for my understanding but for anyone else that may be considering. Yeshua was fully man and lived in this realm. What I am eluding to (not trying to be blunt but..) is Yeshua had the divine nature as well. That’s what I think has the ‘alarm’ set off. Yes, he’s both Son of Man and God’s Elect (if we can believe the text). Without sounding trite… Yeshua could toggle both realms (and others for all I know). Given this, and back to breaking down paradigms to free our minds to see what the ‘power and glory’ really meant is just another stone along the path.
Laurita, Skip rarely “strikes a nerve” in you. But something has been struck as your “assume it has NOTHING to do with Him” reveals, when, in fact, Skip said “has little to do with”. Paradigm after paradigm has been broken (sometimes shattered) for me as I have continued to seek to understand. It may be fair to say that many of us in this “community” hesitate to share where we are in our spiritual walk/journey with even those closest to us because “I was stupid when I [believed] that” and I may be “stupid” still. I am thankful for you and all you willingly share. Thank you for this vulnerability.
And, Skip thank you so very much for yours! You put yourself out here over and over and show us ourselves. I am grateful for how you have helped me get the permanent marker off my whiteboard of faith/spirituality and how you keep nudging me to look at what is written there that I may want to erase, modify, re-write, reconsider, investigate further… Thank you for helping me to grow less and less fearful about my beliefs, and more and more open to my “stupidity”.
Thanks for this. Sometimes I just get annoyed at all the going around in circles stuff. I just want to keep moving forward, but, of course, at my pace and for many here that might not be the right pace for them. So, to be quite vulnerable, I get discouraged that we go round and round the same thing (in my mind). I just want to turn the page and see what comes next. In a sense, I could just do this – ignore everything there and just let all the contributors work it out for themselves. I have been tempted to do that (actually advised to do that). But then it would really only be my journey. So I keep engaging, but at times it really feels like pulling teeth. Your comment today has calmed this writer. Thanks again.
And Laurita, my dear, I so much look forward to what you write and so many here are obviously following you. Sorry if I wasn’t quite so clear. We need a long face-to-face over a week or more. Perhaps we should do a conference together and invite everyone to sit in.
Skip you have not addressed the “paradigm” of the PHD of information and communication systems Dr. Chuck Missler . “The 66 books which we call the Bible constitute a highly integrated message system. What makes this so astonishing is the fact that they were penned by more than forty different people over a period of several thousand years! Yet we now discover that virtually every detail of the Biblical text evidences a highly skillful integrated design from cover to cover. In fact, every word, every place name, every detail was apparently placed there (in the original) deliberately as part of an overall intricate plan.
What is even more astounding is that it can be demonstrated that the origin of this intricate design is from outside of our dimension of space and time.” How does that fit in with your Paradigm ?
You’re right. I haven’t. And I probably won’t.
Interesting, as an architect I have to bridge art and science, poetry and psychics. DR. Missler- a scientist in physics and information systems analyzed the numeric designations in Hebrew characters with computers He and others discovered amazing things not related to the social/ intellectual contexts at all (ie from out side this worlds sphere of capability ). The scientific knowledge expressed in the scriptures exposes revelations not seen in a mere cultural or linguistic analysis. Men of science have spent lifetimes’ discovering and proving true what God explained in Job, no matter who he used to write. Some things proven just in the last 5 years. But let’s not consider that at all. Thank God for the prophets who did not dismiss his word because it did not line up with their per-conceptions or paradigms. Knowing can get in the way of discovering.
Skip, I for one have come to enjoy the ‘engagement’ you provide. It’s enlightening, heartfelt and for me productive as I stretch and pull my mud soaked sandals forward. Please, turn the page and gently bring us along with you… as I know you are capable. Thank you… and shalom my brother, I will do my best to keep up.
I WOULD REALLY enjoy that! Sitting in on that conversation. I’ve only got two years worth of college education and some times you guys leave me sitting going” What?”. Then I have to reread everything SLOWLY. Those who contribute are SO in love with Father God that I wonder just were my walk is at. Blessing to each and EVERY ONE!
Isn’t it nice to know that NONE of the disciples were college educated? 😉
You mean there’s hope for me !? Ha
“I’ll be there…” Say when!
Lyrics! Do y’all hear them? The Four Tops song, “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” to love and comfort you, with a love that’ll see you through, when you feel like you can’t go on, wow, wow, wow…
Skip, I’m glad you haven’t jettisoned contribution to the discussion. While it may seem like you’re banging your head against a wall, oftentimes it is repetition and that from a different angle that challenges old paradigms. Thirty years ago, I subscribed to a KJV-only Independent Fundamental Baptist worldview; Twenty years ago I was solidly evangelical (yes there is a big difference); two years ago, my foundation was demolished. It’s getting rebuilt, one brick at a time.
Thank you, Leslee, for the clarification. Skip did NOT say “nothing” and I owe him a big apology for putting that word in his mouth and you a big thank you for correcting me. And, BTW, you are plenty available (vulnerable) to us, and usually have something encouraging or inspiring that helps me.
Skip is at his best when he opens cans of preconceptions but the worms do crawl out when he does. One of the ways I seem to be limited to is to take something that got foisted onto me and ‘own’ it for the purposes of throwing it out there to see what sticks. I am not married to anything in my understanding; I throw that out there to see what sticks, too! If it gets flung back at me, I get to adjust it! I want to keep only what can stand.
Skip, you say that ” I am interested in examining those a priori assumptions.” So am I! There is nothing worse than to have been handed a package of those assumptions and then never take a look inside. Its messy in there!
Sorry, y’all, for the mess. And if we ever do get to sit down to talk, Skip, I hope that it will be as an open discussion with everybody else, too. You guys may not be able to tell, but I am dying of curiosity about where everybody is coming from! It all helps me. A big shoutout to everybody who contributed yesterday. If you think what you have on your mind is not relevant or important, please think again.
May YHVH continue to bless this community and may the “love of Christ constrain us” is my everyday prayer.
Thank you, Laurita! Love you, dear sister in Messiah.
Skip, are you pointing to the ‘unseen realm’ as you write… “the truth about living in conscious relationship with God may be facilitated through Yeshua, but that is not the limit of all that is true, and his statement (I am the truth) was not intended to encompass theories of gravity,” ? Are you pointing to Yeshua’s resurrection and ascension as being the “more and truth”? The physical realm is interesting but there’s more… much more to our existence or purpose for creation. Trying to grasp your view and find it as part of mine, if that’s what you speaking to.
I’m with my sister Laurita on this one ” In Him we live and move and have our being” ” All things came into being through Him” Mysterious yes and very much exclusive. God never promised to be reasonable, only accessible, reliable and faithfull. Unlike us…
But aren’t you falling for the fallacy you are arguing against? That’s the problem with arguing with any dialectic; you give the ‘other’ side the only cred it could possibly have. If you really believed what you said, wouldn’t it become irrelevant whether or not the apostolic writers “saw the TRUE meaning”? If truth IS Yeshua, then wouldn’t it follow that any who experience Him in their lives would have a unique – yes – but (relative to their experience, of course) valid take on that truth, too? Different does not mean ‘wrong’. Everybody has a different experience (lens) with which to view truth. That does not mean truth ITSELF is relative; it just means that each of us have a different relationship (“relative”?) WITH it.
The writers of the NT had seen the “revelation of Jesus Christ”: the entire Tanakh condensed and also magnified in His life, death and resurrection. Personally. Of course we cannot see it through their eyes, but that likewise does not mean that we cannot see the Bible through the lens of His life, following their example. (BTW, I put what they write through that lens, too!)
I have to start from Yeshua to get anywhere in that Book. He IS the paradigm – the lens – for everything else. I will then be looking for either validation of Him there (if I am starting from Him), or, if I am starting from another paradigm, I will subsequently ‘find’ invalidation of Him, at some point, according to the paradigm I bring. That is the curse of doubt of any sort, I think; it validates itself.
Hear you Skip… my point based on what Laurita wrote wasn’t a matter of ‘truth’ or “true meaning”. At the very least I was pointing to a multi dimensional view. Gave me a glimpse into the emotional turmoil of them/us/we/they. A rather tightly focused lens on what we’ve been discussing for a while now… emotions! And for me, it was a shift from just reading the flat, two dimensional view of the ancient world according to WHO? Fast and loose, oh yes. Seeing an experience as “it’s just story… don’t look to deep” leaves me dry as those old bones from long ago. So what to think? Stay frozen in the tight confounds of my safe place? Or venture out and take what ‘speaks’ to me and maybe not you. Right? Wrong? Who’s to say… And isn’t this the heart of the matter… the hurt, the lost, the broken, the discarded, unloved and for all intended purposes, the ‘forgotten’. We dismiss their stories, their life’s struggle. For what? To cite one’s own viewpoint? I see it different. Shalom my brother… thanks for the exchange.
“The writers of the apostolic material made the connections to Messianic verses in the Tanakh only AFTER they had experiences with Yeshua….” While this statement may be technically accurate, it would not appear true of all Jews of the day, most notably John the Baptist and his father.
“They just saw the text differently.” Does this mean that the promise of the Holy Spirit was merely a promise of a different gumption?
Thank you Skip. Yesterday you wrote “Resist the Western “news” approach to events. Stories ride the rails of emotional involvement. The storyteller animates the actual events with his felt connection. Try to hear that in these biblical passages. It’s not about what happened when. It’s about how the audience and the actors felt about what happened”
I remember a community of +5000 believers in southeast India. Their pastor and his family works hard gathering food and clean water while ministering his community. From time to time missionaries from US (white Americans with all the good answers) come to “help”. One day a young pastor asked him who he did approach “ homosexualism “. Patiently pastor Bandlamudi explained him that the community was too busy trying to survive on a daily basis that it was not even a “problem”. In India, the Christ is only another god in the shelves. But this pastor shows in real time what love and compassion in action.He teaches the message of the books in the Bible to people that work as a “tribe of Israel” and see this lifestyle as the safest and better way to live.
All that to say this. People in this part of the world need to deattach from luxury and comfort of their life and be real doing the work that entails be a living creature “inspired” by God.
Luz you have provided a great example of Christ in action. Is this not what is intended through the records. We need to come to this understanding. Our talents are to keep less fortunate out of Egypt through caring for each other in the communities we live in… Building each other in living the Ten Commandments.
Living one day at a time is very relieving, but very hard for most who want a plan for everything. Lord, help relieve us of our need to control, especially those coming out of childhood trauma.
Humm, I still think you cutting the cheese fairly thin here Skip.
I’m still sitting with the late Dr. Chuck Missler. While I agree the Bible is story, some mythology, lots of experiences of walking with God I am still and will remain firmly convinced that it is from God for our good, instruction and yes “Theology” in that it is how we study who God is and how he really walks with us. So it is not simply the diary of God’s walking with the Jewish people. He chose Abraham to walk with for a specific reason. To display himself as he is not as we think him to be that we might come to know him as he is not as we think him to be. ( That is a paraphrase from Art Katz) back to Dr. Missler…
“The 66 books which we call the Bible constitute a highly integrated message system. What makes this so astonishing is the fact that they were penned by more than forty different people over a period of several thousand years! Yet we now discover that virtually every detail of the Biblical text evidences a highly skillful integrated design from cover to cover. In fact, every word, every place name, every detail was apparently placed there (in the original) deliberately as part of an overall intricate plan.
What is even more astounding is that it can be demonstrated that the origin of this intricate design is from outside of our dimension of space and time.”
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2013/1123/
‘Original’ is really a questionable word.
Language is a foreign concept 🙂
“[Inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasoning’s and every proud and lofty thing [thought] that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)”, 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 (amplified)
We must guard our thoughts lest we lose our head Chesterton reminds us…
” The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defense of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, know that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify; these were all only dark defenses erected round one central authority, more understandable more supernatural than all – the authority of man to think. We know that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne…What peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs defense”… “The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels. The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our state is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle…In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind…. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it… you cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves…
We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers” (G.K. Chesterton)
The quote from Chesterton, maybe more true in this age of questioning than we realize. Not to say questioning is not needed but think it’s different than searching out the scriptures if it is so. It’s almost like questioning everything has become an addiction a sort of high an adoration of man’s reasoning skills,and we so admire men that give us that fix. All we need to do is buy another book and we can create new trajectories everyday or a paradigm switch every other. Where does it end probably in the great delusion God sends. We are maybe making the word so subjective in every catagory that no objective thought can be found .This blog use to be gracious to other views ,it’s becoming rigid to one view.
When did this blog become “rigid” to one view? Do you not feel as if you are allowed to think and write what you want about how you feel/think? Perhaps you’re a bit too quick to throw out that statement. After all, most of us have been here for more than a decade, and so far we’ve said what we wanted to say.
Richard.. may not be appropriate but gave me a good chuckle! From language to written (by the author at best). Did Yah speak creation into existence or did Yah have a thought? Do the heavenly hosts sing in some language we haven’t heard yet? Hummm… so much unseen, unknown.
Original is questionable; In my Southern Baptist youth, I was sure every letter, word, verse was truth. Then I discovered manipulation of the gospels by men with intent might have designed that truth. Then I discovered even the purported authors of those gospels were men with intent and twisted quotes for a purpose. Then I discovered the words that are on the pages are suspect in translations by men with intent who wrote/rewrote the pages I viewed…so what is ‘truth’…’truth’ is questionable.
Language is a foreign concept; Self-evident. The language is to be understood in the time it was said; Who it was said by; Where it was said.
Go ahead, make Harry Potter all about us. It’s really not that hard.
(By the way, I have a wand in an unopened sleeve…The day those four horsemen [you know those guys in revelations] ride through that crack in the sky… it’s coming out!) I’M JUST KIDDING PEOPLE! Sheesh.
Maybe clarification. Language isn’t a foreign concept. after all, we all have one. It is MEANING that evades us. We know how to speak but we rarely know what we say.
I’m more inclined to think that Language is a foreign concept when it is not our language. It is a concept that only those who speak it, live it, experience it, can understand. How they relay that understanding to us is partial to them. How we can understand a language written in a language/culture from long ago, about an event that happened to others, who spoke another language/culture from before that, and all of that transcribed/morphed through other languages and cultures, is by only infecting it with our paradigm meshed in with the contemporary writers and their paradigms.
We end up with a whole slew of ways to see a text and maybe such as Peter Enns is trying to help us see that. I think that is what you do also Skip.
Of course, we are left up to decide how we want to see the text in our hands. I don’t have a problem with that even if it is not the way I see it. I only pray that we all keep looking. We have a grand opportunity to see what others have done over the ages with this text because of the resources we have at our disposal. Let’s not shut down new revelation of such, especially when it is evidentiary and rational.
Wittgenstein spent the latter part of his thinking on the subject of “language games.” His work was the beginning of Ordinary Language Philosophy, one of the two great schools of the 20th Century. What you describe is what we have called a paradigm, that is, a way of seeing the world that is intimately tied to language, and in particular, native tongue language. So you’re right. Since we are all “translators” and not native speakers, we will automatically see the world differently than those who wrote the texts. That just gives us caution to never interpret the text on the assumption that the original authors used words that mean the same thing we think they mean today.
I’m not so sure that Missler’s conclusions were all that scientific. He seemed to be keen on speculation.
The last two days have been foreign to me. In so many ways, I have no idea what you all are talking about. Maybe that’s for the best. I will have to resort to Oswald Chambers to get some food….. shalom !
sorry. It’s not for everyone. Try tomorrow.
I wasn’t being critical. It’s just sort of out of my depth for now, I guess! Today’s word has changed my life since I hooked up with you. I am so grateful for your commitment Skip and God‘s blessing on my life through this community ! Hallelujah.
Shalom Larry… I read Oswald Chambers every morning. It’s my ‘go to’ to ponder throughout the day! Sometimes it’s challenging enough that I do a ‘re-wind’ a few days later. It’s awesome how we are blessed in so many different ways by so many different people. And yes… HalleluYAH!
“It was so much easier when I thought I had all the answers between those leather covers”
Skip, as I’ve mentioned already, I think you and your readers might like this book by Rachel Held Evans – Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions.
http://a.co/9YdS53C
It’s next on my list.
Good! It’s not in the same genre as Enns’ books, or Scot McKnight’s, but I found it a refreshingly honest account of her personal journey.
And it shows up a lot of the holes in the standard apologetic strategies.
Purchased, Kindle one-click – Thanks, John!
Enjoy, Leslee!
Great book John. Helps a furriner like me understand southern American fundamentalist evangelicals a lot better and how things are changing with the millenials.
May I respond as simply as I know how.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways.” IS 55:8
God is in a realm that coexists with ours. It’s different there.
Very different. Beyond our reckoning. It’s His Way.
Yet, He is WITH us! The presence of His Spirit is more than
compelling and convicting. Ask Abraham. He walked and talked
with God BEFORE the law and scriptures were given. And he did just fine.
I’m more than totally sure Abraham would likely be on the same page
if he lived 4000 years later and read “the Word became flesh and made
His dwelling among us.” JN 1:14 Whaddya think?
And Abraham said, “Amen! It’s His Way!”
“Ask Abraham. He walked and talked with God BEFORE the law and scriptures were given.” Rich, how does that statement square with Genesis 26:5?
Daniel,
Gen 26:5 gives us something to go on. Abraham knew. He knew what God
told him and he received it by faith. And most importantly, he obeyed what he
heard. Gal 3:8 provides some added insight. “The Scriptures foresaw that God
would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to
Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” Apparently, Abraham knew
far in advance through God’s grace and goodness. Hope this helps.
“Connection is not an exchange of information, connection is an exchange of humanity. It’s an exchange of emotion.”
— Sean Stephenson
“To see Jesus, you won’t get there by sticking to the script. You will only see Jesus there in hindsight and under the surface, where your reading of the Old Testament is driven by faith in Christ, where Jesus has become the starting point for re-understanding Israel’s story, not the logical conclusion of Israel’s story.”
I’m not sure which Bible Enns is reading. Obviously he missed John the Baptist’s astute observation of Scripture and recognition of the Messiah as noted in Jn. 1:19-34.