My apologies for being scarce the past week or so. I have been alternately deathly ill or crashing deadlines (or both). My brief intro is below, feel free to peruse it at your leisure. The real business of the day is, however, Question #2. I've hummed and hahed about this a fair bit, unsure of which can of worms to open first. All in all this is the one that I think touches on the widest variety of problematic issues. So here we go:
What is the Bible? How does it work? In what way is it meaningful (or is it meaningful)? In what way(s) is it true (or not true)?
What is the Bible? How does it work? In what way is it meaningful (or is it meaningful)? In what way(s) is it true (or not true)?
5 comments:
Everyone's shy all of a sudden. Or maybe everyone's waiting for someone to make the first move. That's what I was doing!
I will say more about this but I do believe in one sense in sola scriptura and I do believe in the authority of the Bible. But I don't think it is so simple as that.
I think sola scriptura was a useful thing in its time (fighting the abuses of church authority and the oppressive measures of holding church rites over people's heads in a manipulative way because they felt they needed those things for salvation). But I'm not sure how useful or helpful it is now.
There is no such thing as sola scriptura. It didn't show up from outerspace or appear in a vaccum sealed tube. It came in the Church and is passed on in the Church and is heard and listened to in the context of an interpretive community and always with the aid of reason and experience.
Which leaves us asking about authority. But the Scripture itself points to Jesus as the authority, so that's sort of a no-brainer isn't it? Except He isn't really here in the same way the Bible is. I do believe that the Bible is our "norming norm" (Grenz) of all those other potential authorities mentioned above. They work together within Christ's authority as a witness to him. Clearly Scripture is the best and most reliable one we have.
As for infallibility, I have a hard time understanding how words can be infallible. I do think the Bible a reliable and true witness and that it is sufficient.
All that doesn't diminish but exclaims how amazing it is. It is this living and active presence of God to us, it is a gracious miracle of God's communication to us, and is as sacred a thing we have.
Hey,
Great stuff Jon. I'm looking forward to dialoguing about this stuff.
For now, though, I wonder if perhaps the contributers (you, Colin, Scott, Tara, etc) should format their initial takes as separate posts. It might help us to manage comments, etc. Thoughts?
Dustin
Dustin, ya that's the general idea. I thought Jon might just be throwing something out there as a teaser in preparation for the real post. Kind of an amuse bouche as it were.
Ah. My apologies. You guys and your French literary subtlety... I'll never keep up :)
my apologies. i was unclear how this worked and a little hesitant to do a full-fledged post when all i had were scattered thoughts. trust that will be enough to get the ball rolling though.
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