Certainty and Authority

[Ricardo]

(03-10-2012 01:34 PM)Elijah Craig Wrote:  

(03-10-2012 11:20 AM)Ricardo Wrote:  Nobody EVER finds a word in the bible that goes against what they personally believe is TRUE.

For a person who is not certain about things, you sure make a lot of absolute statements.

Are you really saying that nobody has ever read the Bible and changed their mind on something? Really?

Thanks, Elijah, I needed that!

Of course people change their minds when reading the Bible. BUT, what each one of us gets out of the bible is colored by the specific language we speak, the specific translation we choose, the specific culture we live in and the specific age.

And WAY MORE IMPORTANT, all these things are colored by our interpretation. (How is it that we all read pretty much the same small group of favorite verses over and over and continue to get new wisdom out of them?)

So tell me: is there anything taught in the bible that you consider mistaken?

Romans 13 comes to mind: Governments are here not to terrorize good people but to go after the bad?

This was not even true in Paul's time, much less today.

[Ricardo]

Oneflew:

Thanks for your sensible comments about the false dichotomy between Feelings and Certainty.

I agree.

[myotch]

Whether or not the Bible sanctions slavery is a matter of fact.

By sanction, I assume you mean something along the lines of the dictionary definition, i.e., authoritative approval, permission, etc. You and I wold be hard pressed to find direct approval for the ownership of slaves in the New Testament - that is, the parts of the Bible regarding Christian codes and ethics.

You and I may see tacit, or understood but not-spelled-out, approval of slavery by the Christian code of ethics given to slaves and slave-owners.

I don't particularly care for the slavery debate, since what we think of as slavery in modern times was not how it was practiced by the ancient Hebrews.

Here's how the text potentially effects me, however. If we find ourselves without the protection of modern law, and if I were to find myself being a slave, then there is a code of conduct God expects of me. If, on the other hand, I were to find myself living in abundance in such a time, and if I could purchase slaves from, say, an abusive master, and if for the time being I had to keep those slaves while I found a way to secure their freedom, there is a code that is expected of me.

This is all, of course, rhetorical. We don't expect and cannot envision a day in our lifetime where we could be slaves or slave owners. Further, our "higher powers" - the governments that God has placed over us, has granted us the freedom from slavery.

There's more to these issues than "gotcha" verses. And I don't put a lot of stock into private interpretation, anyway. Yes, God speaks to us through Scripture. But I am always skeptical of people using Scripture to justify not acting loving towards God or neighbor.

[Jeremy]

(03-10-2012 10:31 AM)Ricardo Wrote:  Ricardo March 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm

As soon as you say: “He’s told us in His book,” we are into a power trip.

We know what is right and what is wrong. Rom 1:19-20. As soon as we start looking into scripture, we are proof-texting.

pastor's wife March 9, 2012 at 3:40 pm

But it’s either Scripture or my personal feelings, which I admit vary a lot depending on how much rest or nutritional food I’ve been eating. The fact that people have twisted God’s Word to support any number of terrible things is not going to stop me from attempting to discover what it is really saying. And for the parts I’ll get wrong – because I know I will – I will live in love and grace toward others as much as I can.

It's not "either Scripture or my personal feelings" if you're talking about available standards of right and wrong. It's scripture, your feelings, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, your reasoning, sacrificing a goat and reading the entrails, the possibilities are endless, really. To say we must either do what scripture dictates to us or we are just aimless wanderers with no moral compass is a false dichotomy.

If you need a book to dictate right and wrong to you, you're not using your brain and your conscience properly. It's basically a cop-out, saying that instead of reasoning and wrestling through hard questions, I'm just going to put my stamp of approval on X text, convince myself it's divinely inspired, and try to live by that (and ultimately fail).

I think both scripture and one's personal feelings offer imperfect, human understandings of the absolute right and wrong that does exist, but that none of us will live by perfectly all the time. I think moral truth is out there for us to discover just like scientific truth is; but I don't think there's some magic book out there that gives us all the answers to either.

[Tooktheredpill]

Any holy book that has a statement like this should be examined with some measure of skepticism, IMO:

Quote:20 “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21 If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property. --Exodus 21

These verses are not easily explained away by those contending that the Bible doesn't condone slavery.

[Ricardo]

Slavery.

I can't imagine any of us today would disagree on repudiating the concept of one person owning another, no matter how well we treat our possessions.

We agree on the principle, we agree on the basic human right. We agree no matter our religion or our specific sacred book.

So this is a case where when we read scripture, our basic belief is coloring how we read passages that were written thousands of years ago, in a different context, for a different era.

Some of these sacred texts still contain much wisdom. But in this specific case, slavery, I cannot imagine anything today shaking our basic belief.

To a large degree, this is so no matter what the issue we think about: murder, sex, hospitality, love. We KNOW what is right. Sometimes it takes scripture to remind us. BUT the source of TRUTH is not scripture itself.

Time and time again Jesus railed against those who insisted on following rules as a way of gaining favor with God. And yet, we have converted the NT into our new Law.

[myotch]

I agree with your last line, Ricardo.

I personally take the slavery issue as one where time as well as wisdom and much debate, even wars has changed our minds to our modern concept. It wasn't always wrong. In ancient cultures it was a necessity that our modern minds can't really full understand.

There is much that we take for granted today, and that even considering living another way or under another concept would seem reprehensible, even morally evil. I can't imagine a society without protected rights being the foundation. But that's a relatively new concept, and even that's not ironed out all the way yet. I see dictatorships and state-worship and even monarchies being in the range of evil to backwards-oriented. Yet, we live in a world with dictatorships and communism and royalty.

[Elijah Craig]

Ricardo-

There are things in the Bible that directly contradict what seems to be "real" to me. Various things-- submission and authority in marriage, homosexuality, etc.

I also acknowledge that just as the Bible is a product of its time, I'm a product of my time. I'm a white middle / upper-middle class American. If I were born in Afghanistan, that inner voice of "God speaking" would probably tell me it's ok to spank my wiveS for backtalk. If I were born in the Congo 200 years ago I might think it completely OK to sell my neighbor to the white man. If I were born in Alabama 200 years ago I might think it completely OK to buy that man from the Congo and put him to work picking cotton. If I were born in the Soviet Union 50 years ago I might think that the death penalty was acceptable for homosexuality.

In my view it's just too simplistic to hold up the individual as the ground of all truth and deny that the Bible has any authority.

[Ricardo]

Of course the Bible has authority!

There are good reasons why these books and letters were hand copied and sent from one church to the next. They were found to be of blessings to the congregations and the individual believers.

The problem is when people decided to declare one particular collection of books or another to be "The Word of God," and then decided to declare them inerrant and infallible. And worse, decided that God's Good News would from then on be understood only through these books.

When I read Romans chapter 1 and 2 I can't help but feel that we have made these books into idols.

Of course it is too simplistic to hold up THE INDIVIDUAL as the ground of all truth. But so is holding one of the bibles (which one?) as the one and only authority. Sola Scriptura is a myth: The canons themselves depend on the church traditions.

Once again, this is a conversation among believers. The options are not simply belief in one of the bibles or else atheism.

For most of us who left the IFB, it has been an eye opener to realize that there are plenty of God-loving Christians outside of our IFB churches. Actually that the IFB movement is miniscule when compared to the whole Christian church.

Sooner or later we have to settle for a saner view of scriptures.

Many of us have already realized the craziness of declaring the KJV as the only conduit from God to us. The next step, of admitting that there is no way of choosing among the different canons, is only the next step. Our third step would have to be to take a hard look at Textual Criticism.

By then our Certainty and Authority should be well shaken.

I ask again: Is Certainty and Authority what we are selling?

With Tillich, (and the US Army recruiters,) I would have to answer: "God is about being all we can be."

[Don]

Quote:I would have to answer: "God is about being all we can be."

Yet the resounding message from both the pre-written oral traditions we find talked about in the Old Testament to the final written Book of the Cannon of Scripture it is NOT about us.

It is totally and completely, irrevocably and emphaticly, about the Glory of God.

That is the purpose of Christianity. That is why Christ did what he did. It was/is for the Glory of the Father.