How the Bible Is God’s Word [Questions That Haunt]
April 12, 2013 By 57 Comments
OK, it’s time for me to quit stalling and answer Jake’s question, which so many of you have already endeavored to answer here and here. Jake asked,
I’m having trouble with believing that the Bible is literally God’s words, God’s actually intended message to humanity. I’m also having trouble with taking the Bible as my sole authority. I always hear Christians in arguments say, “Do you have a verse for that?” or “Where in the Word-of-Gawd does it say that?” So my question is: Is the Bible really inspired, and should we take it as our sole authority?
Jake, I am teaching a class this semester at St. Cloud State University. It is a new experience for me for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve never taught undergrads before — only grad school students — so that’s been a fun, new challenge. And second, I am teaching “Introduction to the Christian Scripture.” If you know anything about theological education, you know it’s pretty rare for someone with a PhD in theology to teach courses in biblical studies, and vice versa.
Reading Gagnon: Morality and Sin [Scot]
April 7, 2012 By 53 Comments
This week, Scot Miller is blogging about Robert Gagnon’s book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics, which many readers of this blog are sure will convince Scot and me that we’re wrong about the gays. -TJ
I should probably quit while I’m ahead, but I would like to offer a final post on Gagon’s book before I shut up.
Again, thanks to Rev. Joseph Hedden, Jr., pastor of Emmanuel Reformed Church of the United Church of Christ in Export, PA, for letting me borrow his copy of Gagnon’s book. I’ll return your copy in the mail next week!
Am I absolutely certain that same-sex intercourse is not a sin when the Bible apparently says it’s a sin? Why shouldn’t I defer to the “clear” statements and commands in the Bible? Who am I to judge God’s word?
I’m not absolutely certain about moral matters in general, since moral reasoning is not like reasoning in mathematics or logic. (About the only absolute moral principles I can think of are very specific, like, “Rape is wrong.”) While I’m convinced that some moral principles and values are objective, the moral conclusions we reach are never certain, and require ongoing reflection and re-examination. So while I’m no moral skeptic, I think it’s important that we have good reasons for our moral judgments.
At a minimum, I think that good moral reasons are determined within the community of moral agents who have to live together. Moral people may disagree between themselves, but we can all provide reasons for why we act morally as we do.
Then we need to ask whether our reasons are really good or not, whether they can stand up or not. As Paul said in 1 Thess. 5:20-21, “Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.”
So while I could be mistaken, I’m highly confident that the biological sex of the participants is irrelevant to the question of whether intercourse is morally good or bad. Heterosexual intercourse is neither inherently good nor bad, and the same is true for same-sex intercourse. Intercourse may be sinful when someone uses deception or coercion or violence, but it’s hard to see how the biology the participants is relevant.
[Read more...]
The Bible Made Impossible: Part Two – The Cure
December 8, 2011 By 7 Comments
This post is part of a three-part series on The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture
The Ailment – The Cure – The Fatal Flaw
I know, I wrote that yesterday, and you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow for the payoff on that. But I wanted to remind you that I think that before I today look at Christian Smith’s solution to the problem of biblicism — a problem that I don’t have.
The Bible Made Impossible: Part One – The Ailment
December 7, 2011 By 41 Comments
This post is part of a three-part series on The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture
That is, I think there’s a problem with this book that undercuts it’s premise entirely. But you’re going to have to wait until Friday to read my opinion on that. In the meantime, I’m going to look at Smith’s diagnosis of the ailment affecting how some people read the Bible, and his proposed cure. Today, the diagnosis:
Biblical Marriage
July 12, 2011 By 33 Comments
Christian Universalism: Cosmology
February 3, 2011 By 51 Comments
Being that I’ve been to Italy a dozen times, as a student, a tourist, and a tour guide, I’ve seen lots of creepy, medieval depictions of Hell. The most arresting may be the doors of the Duomo in Orvieto, a detail of which is shown above.
Each of these depictions, however, is based on a cosmology that has long since been abandoned by Western intelligentsia. We now look someone curiously at earlier cultures, in which people believed that there was a physical place populated by damned souls and governed by demons. No longer can we say that Hell is “down” and Heaven is “up.” Whether you accept a theory of chaotic inflation of the universe or a cyclical model in which the universe repeatedly contracts to a single point and then explodes outward again, it’s impossible to think of Heaven and Hell as places in the universe as we know it.
Some get around that by thinking that Heaven and Hell are places outside of the present universe, while others argue that both will only really exist at the end of time, when God (re-)creates them. Until then, these latter folks argue, people who have died are in a state of “soul sleep.” Both of these conclusions once again raises the metaphysical problem.
But it raises an exegetical problem as well: Jesus held an incorrect cosmology. [Read more...]
The Possibility of Christian Universalism
January 4, 2011 By 51 Comments
Well, the issue of Christian universalism didn’t “pop” last year, as I had predicted, but Scot left a comment on another post saying that Rob Bell’s 2011 book will deal with the issue. That will likely bring it to the fore of the conversation in American evangelicalism. But I don’t want to wait till then to begin exploring the idea.
As with other theological issues I’ve addressed here — the atonement and same sex marriage, to name a couple — I don’t come in with my mind made up, although I am leaning toward it. Nor have I spent any time reading or really even thinking about it. But I do think that it’s important and deserving of ongoing consideration and theological reflection.
What I don’t think is very interesting to pursue is whether some individuals are submitted to eternal torment by God. If you think that, then you interpret the Bible very differently than I do and we probably disagree on just about everything. So this won’t really be a forum to debate what Hell is like, or even if there is a Hell or not — that’s ultimately irrelevant to the question, because there could be a Hell to which God sends no one. Nor is this really about annihilationism as a possible solution to the God-wouldn’t-send-anyone-to-torment-but-God-can’t-remain-just-and-let-everyone-in problem, although we may have to address it.
It seems to me that the big question is, Can you be a universalist and still be a Christian?
This raises all sorts of question about what is a “Christian.” And I suspect that we’ll also have to get into the metaphysics of “Heaven vs. Hell,” which will probably end up making this whole conversation moot (if, as I suspect, “Heaven” and “Hell” are concepts contingent on metaphysics, which I reject.
I’m sure that some of my readers have thought and read more about this than I have, so I ask you: have I got the opening question right?
Chiasms, Irony, and Misdirection in John 4
October 18, 2010 By 10 Comments
Last night, I once again had the pleasure to lead the sermon discussion at Solomon’s Porch. It’s impossible to recount all of the wonderful, beautiful, insightful comments by so many people over two different worship gatherings, but here are a few thoughts. (And if you’re so inclined, I streamed the 7pm sermon discussion from my phone and you can watch the archive of it at Ustream (warning: it’s over an hour long).)
The passage was John 4: 4-42, in which Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well at noon. Here are some of the insights that I and others brought to this passage:
Nathan Clair mentioned on Facebook how important it seems that John juxtaposes this pericope with the one just before. In that chapter, Nicodemus, a knowledgable Jew in good-standing, comes under dark-of-night to question Jesus. Even with Jesus explaining and explaining, Nic doesn’t seem to get it.
Meanwhile, a Samaritan woman who is, both ethnically and theologically abhorrent to Jews, gets what Jesus is about. Not at first, for course, but over the course of the chiastic dialogue in Act One of this passage. Here’s how I diagrammed the passage last night: [Read more...]
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