Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • An Individual in Unity with Himself

    An individual identifying himself as yes2truth left a comment with reference to my new moderate Christian blogroll. I don’t usually do this, but the comment is so ironic that I just had to call attention to it. I must warn you that the irony level is off the scale.

    yes2truth said:

    My full question is this:

    Why do we need moderate Christians? In fact, why do we need any kind of pigeon holed Christian group?

    If I answered this normally, I would suggest that we should first be Christians and second members of whatever particular fellowship we belong to. I do think that there is a value in denominational organizations as long as they are not exclusive.

    But in the context of what follows, the question is itself ironic. It’s rare that someone makes my point for me so clearly, but people frequently complain about the factionalism of others, or how other churches are preventing true Christian unity, while what they really want is for all Christians to unify around their concept of what is true. You can find tiny groups of people all over the world who claim to be in exclusive possession of the truth, and who would expect that the rest of Christianity would unify if they would just understand that the particular little group had truth locked up.

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  • Comparing Scripture with Scripture

    One element of what I call the central loop (programming background comes out!) is “compare.” To review, the central loop involves:

    Meditate, Question, Research, Compare (Repeat as needed)

    This involves a very common principle, that scripture is its own best interpreter. It’s also called “comparing scripture with scripture.” But this process of comparison can be dangerous. It’s very easy to turn comparing scripture with scripture into combining random phrases from one scripture with random phrases from another, and when that happens the result can be absolutely anything.

    So how do you compare?

    Remember that each passage you study is part of an act of communication. It was given under its own circumstances at a particular time and place. In order to sensibly compare passages, you have to understand both passages and how they are related.

    Here are some of the basics:

    1. Whenever you compare two scriptures, be sure you have carefully studied both passages.
    2. Look for the relationship.
      1. Is one copying or quoting the other?
      2. Is one alluding to the other?
      3. Are they talking about the same subject?
      4. Is one the fulfillment of something predicted in the other?
      5. Do they use common symbolism, metaphors, or other languages?
    3. Avoid the assumption that a word defined one way in one passage necessarily means the same thing in another. Words have a range of meaning, and can have different precise definitions in different passages. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is “the substance of things that are not seen,” and in Mark 5:34 Jesus tells the woman with the issue of blood that her faith has saved/healed her. The range of meaning of “faith” (Greek pistis) covers both instances, but we’re not looking at precisely the same point.
    4. Be sure you’re aware of the focus and the key point(s) of each passage.
    5. Be sure you’re aware of who’s speaking. For example, people frequently quote from the speeches of Job’s friends as support for particular theological positions, but God doesn’t appear to be very impressed.
    6. Don’t let comparing scripture with scripture keep you from hearing what each author is saying. It’s easy, for example, to explain away James by quoting Paul, but perhaps it would be good to fully hear what James has to say before combining the two.
    7. Don’t assume that all Bible cross-references are valid. Just because someone printed it in a Bible note doesn’t make it true. Check for yourself.

    Many of these points could do with considerably more discussion, but I think is a good start.

  • Skepticism and Scholarship

    Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his conclusion, but you need to read his entire post for context.

    Skepticism is no more scholarly than gullibility. But they both have one thing in common

  • Welcome Chris Eyre

    Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he disagrees with a number of things in them, so I have invited him to present some of these issues in a series of posts. I haven’t put a limit on it. I’m expecting this conversation to be frank and vigorous. I’ll let Chris introduce himself in more detail as he goes along.

    Let me remind everyone of my comments policy. I remove spam and anything that appears likely to get me in legal trouble or will get my rated ‘X’. If you stay away from those limitations, you are free to express yourself with some vigor.

    I have also set aside some copies of Elgin’s books, both volumes and both study guides, for bloggers who want to get involved in the discussion. I haven’t decided yet on what basis to hand them out, but if you want to comment to this post or e-mail me early with a good reason that you should be one of the folks to get free copies, I’ll certainly give it consideration. The rules that I know of will be that you have a blog on which you comment on religious issues, from any perspective, and that you promise that you will comment on the books on your blog. I know also that I will absolutely not limit the free books to those who are likely to review them favorably. I would like to see bloggers from several perspectives look at these issues. There’s a lot of material in the two volumes, over 400 pages all told, and a number of interesting questions in the study guides.

    I’ll come up with detailed rules and then publicize this further at a later date.

    Have fun!

  • Implementing a Doctrine

    I’ve been discussing essentials of Christianity, as I see them, and emphasizing the doctrine of the incarnation. In the process I’ve mentioned implementing and expressing doctrines. What do I mean by those two terms?

    First, I do not regard the expression and the implementation of the doctrine to be part of the essentials. I believe that our implementation and expression of any idea will be limited at best and may be quite flawed. We do not always know best how to express our love, for example. Recently my wife and I were teaching for a weekend at a church, and one of the members recalled an experience. She told us that a woman had visited her church, and that numerous people had gone up to her, greeted her, and done their best to make her feel welcome. At some point, the woman told one of the folks that she really wanted the opportunity to experience the worship service without being bothered so much. Now let’s assume that the visitor was being honest. In this case a number of church members expressed their love sincerely and to the best of their ability, but the message received by the visitor was something different. We aren’t omniscient; things like this will occur.

    Let me look briefly at the incarnation, its expression and implementation.

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  • Bible Study and Sharing

    In the method of Bible study that I teach, the last element is sharing. Now sharing is last on the list because you have to dig into your Bible study in order to have something to share, but not because it is the least important.

    Recently I have been impressed again with how important sharing is to our Bible study. I occasionally get blank stares when I start to talk about this. Surely sharing is a result of Bible study and not a part of it. But the fact is that when you share effectively, you will also enhance your own Bible study. What happened to me recently was that my wife, who maintains a devotional list, needed some rest from preparing a devotional every weekday morning. We discussed taking a bit of a vacation from that list, but then I suggested that I try seeing what I might write out of my morning devotions. And thus I’ve been contributing to her list for the last couple of weeks.

    Now I teach that one should share and I know from experience that sharing expands learning, but I have really enjoyed the benefit I get from thinking about a passage while asking the question: What can I get from this passage might be helpful to others in their Christian walk?

    In addition, stopping to write down my thoughts makes me read more slowly, and that helps me learn more from the passage than I would otherwise. I recommend both fast and slow reading; fast reading to get an overview, and slow reading with time taken to ask yourself questions about the text.

    The biggest threat to learning about the Bible, or any other subject, is the assumption that you already know. One of the best ways to counter that threat is by engaging in dialogue with others. They will surely teach you that you don’t already know.

  • Consumer Reports Viruses for Testing

    Bob Sullivan has a post on The Red Tape Chronicles about Consumer Reports creating viruses for the purpose of more accurately testing virus software. In particular, these viruses allowed CR to check how capable the programs were of catching new viruses and new variants.

    The antivirus community is up in arms, because they have made it a practice not to do this. I think in this case that their approach and their fear is not well founded. Indeed, a virus created in the lab could leak. But many viruses do get out on a regular basis because people put them out there. The advantage to creating new variants is that you can test and improve your software with them without them being released onto the online community.

    Compare the risks: 1) A virus is released from Consumer Reports labs or 2) A new virus variant, similar to one that Consumer Reports produced, is created and released intentionally. I think the extra preparation and testing is worthwhile. The computer industry needs to become more responsive to the public. The time is past, or at least fast passing, when software developers are the priesthood of an obscure cult, and the rest of humanity just has to take what they dish up.

    Keep up the creative testing! Oh, also be sure to keep those CDs with the new viruses locked up. It might only be a few hours advantage to the virus creators to have them, but let’s not give them any help.

  • Gender Accuracy Fun

    Adrian Warnock has responded to his perceptions of the approach taken by the folks over at Better Bibles. Since this is a topic that interests me, I thought I’d call attention to it. I don’t have anything to add at the moment, as I think Peter Kirk, both in comments on Adrian’s blog, and in a posting on Better Bibles, has brought up all the points I might have noticed.

    It appears that Adrian is accusing the Better Bibles folks of holding a position that I know they don’t hold. I also think Peter Kirk is asking an excellent question when he wonders what political correctness has to do with it.

    My eyes are glued to my comment trackers. 🙂

    PS: I would possibly be more properly accused of political correctness than any of the folks at Better Bibles. See my essay Gender Neutrality and Bible Translation.

  • Bible Puzzlers Anyone?

    There’s a new wind over on Lingamish, and this one brings us The Bible Puzzler. I’m waiting with interest to see what this is going to be, and watching my schedule with interest to see how much time I’ll have to get involved. But this can’t help but be a good thing. If at all possible, watch Lingamish for the first puzzle and get involved.

    How do you read? What do you think it means? Can you back that up?

  • Change to Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator

    This is only a minor change. I wanted some software that would aggregate the way I wanted to, and make it reasonable to include a couple of online forums as well. The result was that I wrote my own software, built on MagpieRSS and really very simple otherwise. At the moment it orders the blogs randomly and goes from most recent back for each blog. I am thinking of adding a simple reverse date order mixing the entries, but that favors blogs that update regularly, and that includes favoring myself, so I’m holding off to see what people like.

    Check this out. Any suggestions are welcome. Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator.