(via harajukudear)
Notes
posted 6 / 11 / 2009
Only by critical questioning can I tell whether I am reading into the text, not only my own presuppositions and questions, but also those of my own generation and even those of my own church and religious tradition. Evangelicals have been too afraid of the word “criticism,” when only by critical questioning can I sufficiently disengage myself from my own worldly or religious (even evangelical) tradition to ask: Is this what the Bible is really saying?— Tony Thiselton (via christianity)
And what’s more, her husband, children, and parents have been imprisoned:
SEOUL, South Korea — A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said Friday.
The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North.
The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri’s government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution.
The U.S. State Department said in a report last year that “genuine religious freedom does not exist” in North Korea. “What religious practice or venues exist … (are) tightly controlled and used to advance the government’s political or diplomatic agenda,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a May report. ”Other public and private religious activity is prohibited and anyone discovered engaging in clandestine religious practice faces official discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution.”
The report cited indications that the North Korean government had taken “new steps” to stop the clandestine spread of Christianity, particularly in areas near the border with China, including infiltrating underground churches and setting up fake prayer meetings as a trap for Christian converts.Sad.
[A] collection of the essays that preface The Green Bible, coupled perhaps with an anthology of relevant portions of Scripture, would surely have been a useful and valuable thing. But subjecting the whole of Scripture to one agenda—enfolding it in the single adjective green—is, I think, an ill-judged strategy for pursuing a worthwhile goal.
Still more ill judged is the over-egging of the rhetorical pudding. The project website tells us that “with over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth.” I am not sure what to make of this argumentum ad arithmeticum, unless the point is that the earth is approximately 1.88 times more important to God than love and 2.04 times more important than heaven. Based on my own research into this topic and following the same method, I am prepared to say that the earth is 7.04 times more important to God than donkeys (which are mentioned 142 times in the Bible).
~ Alan Jacobs in Blessed are the Green in Heart - First Things
This was just one section of many that I highlighted. Read the whole thing. It’s long but worth it.
A few personal comments on Alan Jacobs:
- He’s a tenured professor of English Literature at Wheaton College, IL (my alma mater - and my beloved department)
- He’s also tumbles at “ayjay.tumblr.com”
- He’s absolutely brilliant, and you ought to follow him.
I’m constantly being surprised by all the people on Tumblr, and especially by how many I’m discovering I know. For me, it is rather exciting stuff.
Yep. His tumblr, which I found today, is how I ran across this excellent First Things piece.
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.—
St. Augustine (via trixiejune) (via christ-follower)
Apt in light of the discussion of the Jefferson Bible.
Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, ‘I only believe these parts?’—
Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father’s view of God, faith - Los Angeles Times
(via danielholter)
I thought the Jefferson Bible was pretty well-known. I know I learned about it no later than middle school. It’s not all that surprising, considering Jefferson was a deist and cut out anything miracle-related.
Or was the question about the reaction to a modern president doing something like this?
Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’—
Jeremiah 23:16-17 (ESV).
Wow. How often do our preachers today fill us with vain hopes? How many preachers decide for themselves what they want to talk about this Sunday, then shackle a related verse of Scripture to the “visions of their own mind,” rather than consistently exploring the word of the Lord? How many times do we hear “God bless America,” despite America’s general ignorance of the Bible and rejection of righteousness?
(via ptbruiser)
How many times? Try… all the time. Every single preacher “decide[s] for themselves what they want to talk about.”
Whether you’re a fan Osteen or Dobson, your man can prove his point using the Word Of God. And when you speak for God, everyone else is wrong. This is the problem, not whether the gospel of prosperity is having an undue influence on suburban families.
(via danielholter)
Are the excesses in evangelicalism? Yes. Do people abuse Scripture for their own ends? Yes. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there is a correct and true interpretation.
Daniel, you treat exegesis and hermeneutics as if they are unreasoned, undisciplined, and un-scholarly. If that were the case, the Church would not have held together its core doctrines for so many centuries. Most of the disparity in views is around non-essential matters.
Christians should be relentless in their search yet humble in their presentation.
Just yesterday I ran across a blog post on certainty and openness:
When a question cannot be addressed by a clear appeal to the Bible, our conclusions should be all the more modest.
The gospel requires us to have high expectations of one another on biblically central doctrines and strategies, and it cautions us to be more relaxed with one another the further we have to move out from the center.
I haven’t read all of it, so I can’t vouch for its entirety—but it looks like a valuable basic resource. (h/t Theologica)
First, emergents cannot accept the idea of Bible inerrancy. Verbal inerrancy will not stand modern critical examination in the study of languages. To assign fixed inerrancy to ancient documents written in the Hebrew and Greek used thousands of years ago stretches credibility.
Affirming inerrancy does take some degree of faith. But without it we can make Scripture say whatever we want. Evangelicals believe God is big and strong enough to guard the integrity of his revelation to humanity.
Second, emergents have come to believe that the gospel that they have been taught is a caricature of the message of Jesus, rather than the real thing. Increasingly they are putting other Biblical writings in the background and have shown increasing interest in what Jesus said and did.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable….”(2 Tim 3:16) We are to use Scripture to interpret itself. Focusing on just one person or book increases the likelihood of poor interpretation and lopsided theological emphases. Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings are equally important theologically because both are the divinely inspired Word of God.
They ask “If we are followers of Jesus, why do we not live and preach his message?” In short, they are looking for a much more radical Christianity than they have found in the Evangelical (and mainline) churches.
Agreed. People who profess to follow Christ need to live it out better, myself included. (It’s important to note, however, that the previous sentence has been true through all of church history.)
Third, exposure to science in public education, universities and personal studies has led emergents to disown the conclusion that when the Bible and science appear to collide, science must take a back seat to the Bible.
In this conflict, emergents are not abandoning the Bible, but are raising critical questions about the Bible’s nature and content. This new bread of Christian remains quite committed to the Bible but they are very open to new ideas and understandings.
Affirming that the Bible is NOT the believer’s highest authority IS in fact abandoning it. Bowing Scriptural authority to “science in public education, universities and personal studies” (personal studies—is this a joke?) is a perfect example of the human tendency to conform Scripture to culture instead of the other way around.
Fourth, emergents have become disillusioned by the clay feet of church leadership. It is not just the Jim Bakkers and the Jimmy Swaggarts, but the rank and file of church leadership.
Emergents compare what Jesus had in mind and what is going on in churches, and they see a need to start over. They want a fresh start with serious intent to follow Jesus.
The tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater is one of the hallmarks of Emerging theology. This is partly because many (not all) of this movement are disaffected evangelicals overreacting against excess.
Fifth, our public schools and our nation in general are insisting that we be truly multicultural. The churches’ teaching, that people not like us, are doomed, is not acceptable to emergents. They want a much broader definition of what it means to be accepted in the family of God.
John 14:6 - “No one comes to the father except through me.” ~ Jesus (you know, the guy emergents want to focus on at the expense of the apostles).
John 3:3 - “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ~ Jesus
Sixth, emergents are insisting that God be understood as totally gracious and loving. The angry, vengeful God that is sometime presented in both Old and New Testaments is not acceptable.
Unless you dismiss all the OT, I don’t see how one can ignore any of the elements of God’s character (all of which are perfect and holy). God required a blood sacrifice to atone for sin. Nothing has changed in the demand, but thankfully Jesus offers to pay that price for us. As a reviewer of Death by Love writes, “those who demand justice for the poor and oppressed today but deny that God should seek justice for the sins we commit against him are hypocrites.”
Seventh, acceptance of homosexuals in the family of God is common. Being pro-gay or anti-gay is not the issue. Emergents recognize that sexuality is far more complex than is generally recognized. To live in harmony with gay and lesbian friends and family members is a part of the emergent’s perspective.
Emergents’ confused viewpoints on sexuality are, again, products of conforming Scripture to culture instead of the other way around. Sexuality is one of the clearest issues in the Bible. Obfuscations abound today. Still, we in fact called to love everyone.
Eighth, echoing the first named characteristic, emergents recognize the role that language plays in their understanding and practice of the Christian Faith. Theology is language bound. Language is a limited tool of communication.
If theology is language bound, it is also culturally shaped. To be rigidly exclusive does not make sense to emergent Christians.
Again, this is too often used as an excuse to make Scripture say what you want it to say and descend into relativism.
I highly recommend “Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be).”
There are a multitude of problematic aspects to the Patriot’s Bible, including the remarkable way it excludes from consideration almost every aspect of American history that could blemish the image of America or its heroes. For example, on the basis of Zechariah’s prophecy that the Messiah would “speak peace to the nations” (Zech. 9:10) we are given a full page eulogy of Christopher Columbus that celebrates how God had destined this “devout Catholic” to bring the good news of salvation to an unreached people group. Absent from the commentary is any discussion of how he and his fellow pioneers deceived, maimed, raped and murdered a large number of these unreached people. Yet, the selective retelling of American history found in the Patriot’s Bible is not what concerns me the most. What disturbs me more is the way the commentators attempt to give their idealized version of American history divine authority by weaving it into the biblical narrative.—
I am not a fan of the niche marketing going on in Bible sales in general, because it tends to cheapen the gospel and inject politics/materialism/humanism into Christianity. This one seems particularly bad.
