Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Peter Enns on Cosmic Conflict in Genesis and Exodus

    It’s a great article on the Biologos Foundation’s Science and the Sacred blog.

  • Fallibility, Inerrancy, and Mystery

    I think Mark at Pseudo-Polymath is absolutely correct in his excellent post Of Scripture and Tradition.

    When I first decided that inerrancy didn’t work, it was because I found errors as they would be defined by the people that first taught me to regard the Bible as inerrant.  At the same time I remained convinced of Biblical inspiration.  Over time this has evolved in my mind to the position that inerrancy causes us to ask the wrong questions of scripture, something I still believe, despite the efforts of many to frame inerrancy so that it does not have that effect.  My problem is that once one has so framed inerrancy, it appears meaningless to me.

    It seems to me that we try to judge the Bible as a book amongst books, and that we err in doing so whether our judgment is favorable or not.  As scripture, the Bible is a unique phenomenon.  There is no standard by which we could judge it.  There is no category “books inspired by God” which as a set of criteria (presumably also divinely inspired) against which we can judge the Bible.

    I like Mark’s statement “The mystery is the experience …”  That is a very good descriptive phrase.

    Now I don’t think there is any problem evaluating the Bible’s impact on some area of study, for example, its value to historical study, and so forth.  But its value to historical study is not the same thing as its value as God’s message.

  • Essence Restored on the Repeal of Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell

    He thinks Christians should support the repeal, and explains his position very clearly.

  • Congratulations Ken Brown of C.Orthodoxy

    Head on over and congratulate Ken Brown. He’s headed to Göttingen, Germany for his doctorate.

  • Can One Be a Bibleist?

    I received a link to the following video in a tweet from @TheActiveWord.  It seems so closely related to my last post that I’d include it here:

    There are several things I agree with here.  First, I do believe that the Bible has the sovereignty of God and the responsibility (of which some sort of free will seems to be a corollary) of humanity.  Second, I also find labels confining.  Yet the very act of using language involves assigning labels, and I note that Rev. Coy is unafraid to apply labels to the editors of Christianity Today.

    But the bottom line again is the idea, presented right toward the end, that one can be a “Bibleist” and believe “the Word of God” without “man’s interpreations.”  Yet even the statement that the concepts of sovereignty and responsibility exist together in some sort of tension is an interpretation.

    I don’t understand why so many Christians are afraid to admit that they are interpreting and then they are following their interpretations.  It sounds so pious to claim that one is following just the word of God without any human involvement.  But by the very fact of recognizing it as God’s word, reading it, and applying it, you are interpreting it.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s just a fact.

  • Biblioblog Rankings for January

    Thanks to Jeremy for doing all the work.  I’m at #8 amongst some pretty great company!

  • N. T. Wright on Hell

    An interesting short discussion.

  • Few Knew Health Care Bill Got No Republican Support

    I don’t think this is a major issue against the Republicans, in the sense that I don’t think they should be criticized for managing to be united in opposing something that they, well, oppose. That’s good politics, and if they really do oppose the bill (and I’m not certain about some of them) it’s honest politics as well.

    But the voters need to know what their representatives are actually doing, thus I was not surprised, but nonetheless dismayed to learn that according a Pew Research poll, only 32% of those polled know that the senate version of the health care bill was passed without a single Republican vote, while only 26% know that it takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster.

    Why do people need to know that sort of thing? How do you know who is doing what if you don’t understand the basic of the process? Knowledgeable voters are critical to the success of democracy, and we have a serious problem.

    I note that the news story in which I picked this up, Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, there was no mention of the fact that Republicans did better on the quiz than Democrats. Being an independent, I’m not as concerned here, but it’s an interesting result.

  • Surfacing again after Server Work

    I’ve been working on servers both for my personal and business sites. I think the results are largely good, though due to the speed with which I did the work I keep finding glitches I need to correct.

    I have also marked quite a few items in my RSS reader for links or comments, so I’m going to do a bit of a dump today and tomorrow catching up. Of course some of these items will probably never see the light of day because their time is past.

    If you have had difficulties with the site or its feed (which I know was down for some hours), please accept my apologies.

  • Hebrew Codices for Download

    Seforim Online provides downloads of some pretty nice stuff.  I downloaded Codex Leningradensis.  Details at Awilum.