Recently, I’ve written a bit about the difference between science and theology. One of the key differences is that science expects to change, whereas if theology is not assuming it is founded on bedrock, it is usually looking for some bedrock. Religious people often criticize science on the basis that it changes too often. Its history is one of repeatedly overturned theories.
Category: Biblical Inspiration
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Interpreting Away what is Clearly Taught
In this week’s Christian Blog Carnival #CL, now posted at Brain Cramps for God, I found an excellent post from Amanda on Imago Dei titled The Limits to God’s Grace This goes back to an article by Bart Campolo on which I commented about a week ago in my post Conceptual Idolatry.
Amanda has written a thoughtful post which is well worth reading. She has avoided some of the rhetorical heat and settled for a great deal more light than the average post on this topic does. But my interest here is not on the correct answer to the question of grace, heaven, and hell and the nature of God that Campolo presented (though in general that is a central, perhaps the central question), but rather on the issue of who in this debate is more Biblical, and how we can know such a thing.
Accusations, and in Campolo’s case confessions, of picking and choosing, interpreting away, or just plain ignoring various scriptures or scriptural teachings are a dime a dozen, and they are rarely examined, especially by those who agree doctrinally with whoever is making the claim. In this case Campolo says outright that he will interpret away any text that disagrees with his basic conception of God. Quoting him as quoted by Amanda:
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How God Impacts Science
There’s been a bit of a dust-up around the blogosphere about this over the last few days to a large extent amongst people involved in science professionally in one way or another. Since I’m not responding directly, I will only note that I read of this debate through Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and you can find links at Ed’s current post, Clarifying the Moran Debate.
Since I’m called a theistic evolutionist, though it is a term to which I have previously objected, I thought I’d make a few comments on how God and scripture impact the way I look at science. I can’t say “the way I do science, because my field is Biblical studies, and not one of the natural sciences.
My answer to the question could be either “lots, in every way” (to paraphrase Paul in Romans 3:2), or “not at all.”
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Conceptual Idolatry
Paul tells us that we now “see dimly in a mrror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), but some of us are quite certain that we see clearly. While I believe we should make every effort to get closer to the truth, it’s important that we understand that God’s ways are not our ways, and thus we will never get precisely to a “God’s eye view” of any problem or issue. In a recent comment Oloryn noted that:
. . . in reading scripture, we are in the position of listing to One who does not share our outlook. If we haven’t learned to do that with people, are we going to be able to do that with God?
Now he was responding to some comments I made about listening to God in scripture, and those were some good points, but in making that point he has also noted that God does not share our outlook. And that’s an important point to remember.
This post was triggered by a post by Joe Carter over on Evangelical Outpost. In that post he accuses Bart Campolo (son of Tony) of idolatry:
Still, it is rather shocking to hear someone be unabashedly open about their idolatry as Bart Campolo, son of Tony Campolo, is in a recent article for The Journal of Student Ministries*:
[Carter continues by quoting Campolo]
Now my intention is not to respond in detail to Joe Carter on this. It’s simply that his post came at a time when I was thinking about this sort of thing and struck me as just plain wrong. There are some points on which I disagree with Campolo as well, though my primary intention is not to defend him either.
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Just What the Bible Says – Again
By reading the new Methoblog portal, I located an entry The Use and Misuse of the Bible . Most of this is a quote of a sermon by A. Allen Brindisi at Davidson College Presbyterian Church, which you can read here, though there is a substantial quote in the blog entry.
To quote from the sermon:
There is the rub: to distinguish between what the Bible seems to say, and what it really
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Violent God
As I approach the actual story of the flood in my series on Genesis 1-11 on the Participatory Bible Study blog, my attention is drawn to the problem of violence in the Bible generally, condoned by God, commanded by God, or even carried out by God.
Recently on the web I’ve seen quite a number of comments on this issue. On Adrian Warnock’s blog, Andree posts about God’s absolute hatred of sin. After reading a number of incidents from the Israelite wilderness wanderings, and adding in the death of Jesus on the cross, she concludes,
1. God hates sin more than anyone.
2. God is more merciful than anyone.And certainly one cannot read those passages without hearing at least the message that God deplores sin. God is clearly portrayed here as acting violently against sinners, often in what we might call an arbitrary and capricious manner. The context of hatred for sin certainly intensifies the meaning of the atonement. But is it enough to state that God truly hates sin, and to point out that God provides atonement? Does this explain why God behaves as he does?
In Genesis 6, on which I will be blogging shortly, we are told that God planned to wipe out all livingthings on the earth, though he made an exception for those who are saved in the ark. But I’d like you to ask yourself this question: If this story were told about a god from any religion other than Chrsitianity or Judaism would you think of the deity as good or evil?
Lingamish discusses a similar problem. He’s wondering how one can read the book of Judges devotionally. He said:
I just finished this book and I was amazed at the violence, idolatry, and misogyny it documents. One way of trying to not reject Judges is to see it at as a depiction of negative heroes. That is, Judges is not showing behavior to emulate, but rather behavior to avoid. But what do we do then about Hebrews 11 where many of the judges are held up as heroes of the faith?
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Revelation Before and After Jesus
Some time ago (September 5, 2005) Adrian Warnock wrote an excellent entry on the need for a Christian experience in the present (hat tip: Peter Kirk). As usual, whether I agree or disagree, Adrian does a fine job of presenting his position, and in this case, I do agree.
He continued that entry with another that discussed the nature of revelation both before and after Jesus. To get a clear picture of Adrian’s position you will need to read more than I can quote here, but the following should give the general flavor:
Such a widespread outpouring of the Spirit cannot ever be purely for Scripture-writing and authenticating. If “all flesh” can prophesy, it is inevitable that they must have something by which to judge those words, for they cannot all be of equal weight or authority. In fact, Jesus was the last true Prophet in the sense of being authoritative and inerrant in everything He said. So where, prior to Jesus, authority rested in a few people who prophesied, but did so inerrantly, in the new era authority rests solely with Jesus and operates through the Scriptures, but the Spirit is poured out so that “all flesh” can prophesy whilst those prophecies are to be judged by the authoritative revelation contained in the Bible.
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Nitpicking Translations
Centuri0n responded, in a way to my post Conscience of a Christian Publisher. I posted a response once, and unfortunately that response was eaten by the server. I was able to restore everything else, but this I have to rewrite. I’m not trying to repeat the other post precisely, so if you read it, don’t look at this as a duplicate, though I am trying to cover the same ground.
There are a number of things I could respond to, such as his comments on my use of “conscience,” but I think I’ll skip to what I see as the major problem of logic, and it’s one that is not unique to centuri0n. It’s quite prevalent amongst advocates of literal translations. Consider the following quote:
My complaint about the TNIV, as you can read for yourself, is that it whitewashes the controversial nature of its methodology. Now, if the Bible is just a “signpost”, my complaint is, of course, nit-picking. What the Bible says isn’t actually of first importance but of far secondary importance
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Jesus is God and the Bible Is Not
This is one that seems fairly obvious to me for anyone who partakes of orthodox Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was God incarnate, God in the flesh, the Word become flesh, then Jesus must be the center of Christian faith and Christian theology. If you believe that Jesus was merely a prophet or less, then you obviously have the potential for other answers. One prophet, for example, could not become the center as opposed to all the prophets. But for now let’s stick with this more or less orthodox, trinitarian, incarnational theology.
A friend called my attention to a blog, Biblical Foundations, where Dr. Andreas Kostenberger posts. There he has a post titled Jesus and the Bible, in which he complains of people making Jesus more central to Christian theology than the Bible, a complaint which he could certainly level at me.
He says:
It seems strange why anyone would want to pit Jesus against the Bible, but in recent weeks the question which of these two is primary, Jesus or the Bible, has once again taken center stage in many circles.
As long as there are people who put the Bible ahead of Jesus, this is certainly an excellent topic to discuss.
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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