Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Biblical Inspiration

  • The Impossibility of Verbal Plenary Translation

    I have heard many good things about Mars Hill Church in Seattle, despite some theological disagreements (with whom do I not have such disagreements?) so I was disappointed to receive the following via e-mail from a friend: Theological reasons for why Mars Hill preaches out of the ESV.

    This isn’t intended as an attack on the ESV. I put the slogan “the best Bible version is one you read.” If you find your Bible reading life lighting up when you read the ESV, then by all means use it for reading and study. If the carefully gender accurate language of such versions as the NRSV grates on your nerves, then by all means use it, but admit that it’s because of your language tastes, and not because of theology. If you’re reading the ESV because you think it is theologically more correct, or because it more accurately and clearly conveys the message of scripture to the populace in general, then I urge you to think again.

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  • Pat Robertson and the Meaning of Prophetic

    One of the dividing lines in Christian churches today is over the gifts of the Holy Spirit. While speaking in tongues gets most of the attention, the gift of prophecy is a close second. In terms of its potential to tear a church apart, it comes out ahead of tongues, I think. Currently there seem to be two major approaches. First, there are those who refuse to allow anything like prophecy, seeing safety in simple denial, while on the other hand we have many churches in which just about anyone who claims to speak words from God is at least tolerated.

    There is also a strong tendency not to want to say anything in opposition to anyone specific who claims to be a prophet, often under the idea that one should, like David, never speak against God’s anointed. The difficulty here is that one has to question the precise type of anointing and calling of someone who peddles nonsense as the word of God.

    Let me clarify quickly what I mean here by prophetic. There is a general popular sense of “prophetic” as a message that predicts the future. On the other hand, there is a religious or spiritual sense of prophetic that deals with correction and challenge to a group of people. A “prophetic voice” might call a community to greater social action, for example. The Biblical prophetic movement combined aspects of both. I would suggest, in fact, that you will find little or no prediction in Biblical prophecy that is intended simply to satisfy curiosity or to provide information about the future as its purpose. Rather, when a prophet speaks of the future he does so to challenge the community or individual to some form of action, or to rebuke or correct.

    Both of these aspects are tied together by the affirmation of the prophet that he speaks for God, and by the acceptance of the audience that he does so. Prophets did face rejection, but only rarely was this rejection based on the assumption that the prophet was false. The sense in which I’m using the word “prophetic” prophetic here includes those three elements: challenge or rebuke, prediction or promise, and an affirmation of divine guidance or content.

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  • Dave Warnock on Wayne Grudem Interview

    Dave Warnock has posted an excellent set of reflections on the Wayne Grudem interview series. I strongly recommend reading it, especially some specific reflections from a Methodist perspective. While I do not use the term “evangelical” and Dave does, the problem is a difference of definition. Some of us try to hang onto words and defend them. I generally discard them as they begin to be used of things with which I do not agree.

  • Inerrancy and Liberal-Conservative Dialogue

    In a comment at , Adrian Warnock says the following:

    Dr Grudem has expressed regret for the use of the word “blasphemy”, and as far as the quote from his systematic theology goes you have to understand that his aim is explicitly to build a theology based on the assumption that the bible is inerrant – I am not too sure how you think a liberal theology would help in that aim…

    (See also Dr. Grudem’s retraction of his agreement to the use of the word blasphemy.)

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  • Idolatry and Male Representation

    The new, young associate pastor was praying, and in her prayer she referred to God as “Father-Mother God.” Silence settled over the congregation as mental gasps replaced “Amens.” The associate pastor had transgressed the unofficial line. You can represent God as vengeful or loving, gentle or angry, gracious or demanding, present or distant, but don’t you ever present God as male and female.

    I was preparing a communion service with a slightly non-traditional text. Someone reading the material brought a portion of it to me. Was I sure I wanted to use this passage? Wasn’t it feminized? My text had crossed the line. I can represent God as just about anything, but never use feminine language. The feminized language in question? ” . . . gather us under your wing as a hen gathers her chicks . . .” (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34).

    We constantly use images for God, mental images, yes, but images nonetheless. And there is nothing wrong with mental images, provided you don’t cast them in stone–real stone or mental stone. The Bible uses plenty of images of God, including the feminine image of divine wisdom as used in Proverbs.

    The problem comes in when you fix the images in place so that they become your picture of God instead of allowing God to constantly interact with you, shatter your images, and grow you up. As I previously commented on this:

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  • Christianity vs Paulianity

    Dave Warnock has made an interesting discovery while looking at the interview with Wayne Grudem that Adrian Warnock is publishing on his blog (#6 entry). Jesus has been almost totally left out of the argument.

    I commented on the type of view of scripture that seems to lead to this previously, and in my recent post on deciding who is saved I note that one of the problems I see with current evangelical views on atonement, and particularly on putting penal substitutionary atonement front and center, is that it puts the material out of order.

    In the history of salvation, Jesus came first, and then Paul interpreted him. While the gospels are generally dated after the letters of Paul (though this can be contested), the oral traditions of Jesus on which Christianity first rode forth into the world obviously predate anything Paul wrote. Many modern Christians seem like art critics who, instead of actually looking at a painting, read from a description while the painting itself is readily available. The direction of study should start with Jesus, and who he is, and then read Paul where he fits in, which is in applying the message of Jesus to a broader community. In particular, the kingdom parables say some fairly definitive things about the kingdom, which we often permit theology to override.

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  • I’m the Guy Wayne Grudem Warned You About

    Well, not really. He warned you about some other, much more important guy. But I agree with the guy Wayne Grudem warned you about! Hey! Come on down to the bottom of the slippery slope! The water’s fine!

    Adrian Warnock’s interview with Wayne Grudem continues with its fifth part, Must a Woman Always Remain Silent in Church?. It is at times like these that I begin to wonder why I’m involved. Of course, the answer to that is that I advocate continued communication, however distant, between liberals and evangelicals, and in my view even more importantly between liberals and charismatics. For that reason alone, I read Adrian’s blog, regularly consult conservative commentaries, and generally read more conservative literature than liberal. But when the title of a post asks whether women should always remain silent in church, I am reminded that there is a great gulf present in the way we think and approach subjects. One may hope that the great gulf is not fixed, but one fears otherwise.

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  • Does Gordon Fee Discard Part of the Bible?

    In the third part of his interview series, Adrian Warnock makes the following comment in asking a question of Dr. Wayne Grudem:

    I was impressed by your compassion and fairness in the introduction of your new book expressed towards your egalitarian colleagues who you mention by name.

    At a later point, talking about Dr. Gordon Fee, Wayne Grudem says:

    I doubt that people understand the full implications of a move like Gordon Fee’s in his commentary on 1 Corinthians when he basically says that 1 Corinthians 14:33

  • The Most Annoying Theologian I’ve Never Read

    . . . is Wayne Grudem. Well, not quite true. The most annoying theologian is Peter Ruckman of the Pensacola Bible Institute, and I have read some of his stuff. I’ve also read articles by Grudem, and I wouldn’t come close to excluding him from Christianity, so I guess I have read him and he’s not the most annoying. So how about I wanted a provocative title?

    When there’s someone I really don’t want to take the time to study seriously, it’s nice to have someone else, whose reading ability I’ve come to trust in the blogosphere, take a look. And that is what Dave Warnock has been doing. The first item was Responding to provocation, and the second Starting to understand connections. I am substantially in agreement with Dave on these things. It might also be a good idea, of course, to read the original interview, starting here.

    Like Dave, I believe the connections can be broken at any point. I discuss inerrancy here and I have some thoughts on gender language and translation here.

    Later today I will be posting on salvation and particularly on the question of who will be saved and whether we can know. I’m also going to respond to one point in the third part of Adrian’s interview with Wayne Grudem, [update] which I have now posted here. Three recent posts of mine are also relevant, The Danger of Unchanging Truth, And I’m not . . . , and Truth, Pluralism, and Absolutism. None of these respond directly to Adrian Warnock (not to be confused with Dave) and Wayne Grudem, but they do relate.

  • Can a Translation be Completely Accurate

    There’s an interesting thread in the Religion Forum right now, What is a Biblical Translation?, which goes into the issue of whether one can create a 100% accurate Bible translation.

    Of course, the answer is “no.” If you want 100% accuracy, you need to go to the source language. But even there you bring yourself into the process, and because you bring yourself, a fallible, finite human (unless you’re special), into the process, your reading will never be 100% accurate.

    In a later message, one member asks the question of whether God could make a translation 100% accurate. I sense that all theists are supposed to automatically respond with “yes!” But I disagree. Only by changing the very nature of language could God create a 100% accurate translation. Only by changing the very nature of humans, making us non-finite and not just sinless, could God make us understand such an accurate translation with 100% accuracy.

    The bottom line is this: If you use a translation, you will indeed lose something. I’ve commented before about the need to compare translations and be very careful with context in order to alleviate this problem. But none of those options are equal to knowing how to read the source languages.

    But beyond this, we must face the fact that no matter how versed one becomes in the source languages one is still human, still fallible, and still well removed by history and culture from the writers of the source. We have a drive to find the one and only totally accurate revelation, but we really have no mechanism for understanding such a thing. We see dimly in a mirror, and we’re going to have to get used to the humbling reality of living with that.

    If you comment, please go to the thread there.