The Clarity of Scripture and Christian Diversity

Otagosh shared this video of a funny song which transforms a traditional carol into “The Twelve Doctrines of Christmas.” The irony (presumably intentional) is that it starts with the doctrine of perspecuity – the teaching that Scripture is clear – and yet goes on to list doctrines about which Christians who agree in affirming the authority and clarity of Scripture disagree on. This is too good to save until Christmas…

Of course, in recent discussion of earliest Christianity, this is something of a moot point, both because the only Scriptures the Church had were the Scriptures of Israel, and so there were no direct answers to “New Testament questions”, but also because options such as allegorical interpretation allowed one to read one’s beliefs into Scripture. [UPDATE: Darrell Pursiful has posted again on this topic, on early Christian “ecumenism”, offering a list of major groups/currents reflected in the New Testament.]

That leads on to the next post I’d like to share, with a slight rewrite. Today at Unreasonable Faith there is a post about Eisegesis – i.e. the reading of beliefs already held into Biblical texts. To rework a quote there, this approach (of which we are probably all guilty at least sometimes) transforms the bumper sticker slogan into a more honest form: “I believe it, (therefore) the Bible says it, that settles it.” There’s also an article on this topic on Slacktivist.

Also related is Tripp Fuller’s post on Juergen Moltmann’s view of the relevance of Trinitarianism to Christian unity-in-diversity, as is Joel Watts’ post on building an Appalachian hermeneutic.

Finally, there is a post including a video on Pharyngula which illustrates in both a comical and a serious way our blind spot as a society when it comes to recognizing that we’re the baddies, and another from Ken Pulliam on how cases of split brain can apparently result in simultaneous belief and non-belief in God. Perhaps what we should learn from this is that the roots of diversity and disagreement are within each of us and not merely a result of our interaction with others.