I think we all *do* have faith in something, that
is we all accept some dogmas. Some people are aware of their dogmas, others
are not interested in them, and that's fine, but still others think they have
none, and that's self-deception. As a logician, I try to identify my dogmas,
or presuppositions. There's a sense in which we can't ever justify them, but
we can identify them, and I think it's good to.
But I stick to my
simple statement. If I know what the Bible is telling me to do, and I don't do
it, then I'm disobeying God. I can't see how I can regard the Bible as any
sort of measure of doctrine and action, as the Basis of Union commits the UCA
to doing, otherwise.
Then how do
you know what the Bible is telling you to do? I think part of the problem here
is that we are unclear as to what it means to give authority to the Bible.
I agree the that the church as a body gives certain
authority to the Bible as the means by which we hear the Word of God, and
that is for the Uniting church Jesus Christ. But we don't do it by saying that
"these are the words of God". We do it through careful and
scholastic study and ask questions like, 'does this have anything
meaningful to say to me in todays world?' Sometimes we have to be
prepared to say that it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I hold the Bible in
great esteem, but I uphold it as tool to help me grow in my relationship
with God, not as the only _expression_ of God's message to the
world.
- If you don't follow some instruction that is in the Bible such as
stoning your delinguent sons to death, does that mean you are going
against God?
I've never met anyone, UCA member or otherwise, who
interprets the Bible in this way. Have you?
I have met many who have
claimed it to be the literal word of God. However, when they get to the sort
of instructions mentioned above they develop selective
amnesia.
- When and how did the Bible become the sole word and authority of
God?
IMO it's not. I thought I'd already said that quite
clearly.
Some members of the UCA do hold this view, but not me. But I
do think that those who do hold this view are in far better shape by
submitting to the authority of the Bible than by submitting to none at
all.
- I think I am having problems with what you mean by submitting
to the authority of the bible. The idea of submitting to the authority of
something or somebody seems to mean to me that you are prepared to stand
under their control, rules or regulations. I cannot see the Bible as such
an authority. Even the ten (or is it nine) commandments evolved from
a human response to how a group of people saw themselves in covenant
with their particular God, Yahweh. In their earliest form in Exodus
34:11-28 they are virtually all concerned with cultic practice and I
certainly have no problems abiding by such things as not boiling a kid in
its mother's milk. (I am quite happy to stand under this rule and am
confident I will never break it.) But the point I am making is that these
writings are human constructions and to take them out of their
historical/cultural context creates all sorts of difficulties.
-
-
- Who decided it was and what authority did they have to do
so?
You'd better ask someone who believes
that this has been decided, because I don't. I expect they'll tell you about
ecumenical councils and such, but I can't really do their arguments justice as
I don't accept them myself.
- I suspect that Someone has convinced you that the Bible is the word of
God.
Hmmm. I suspect then that you are convinced that the Bible is
*not* the word of God. Am I right?
If so, what do you mean by
this?
More to the
point, no-one has convinced me that the Bible is the word(s) of God. I
am convinced that God has been speaking (or is being revealed) in many ways
and many different cultures that pre-date our Judeo-Christian history. I
believe that Aboriginal culture experienced the presence of God and related
those experiences in their dreamtime stories many thousands of years before
the Jewish culture came into being. Today we are hearing God speak through
some of their stories, especially as they are pertaining to our relationship
to the land and we are hearing God speak very differently to the
traditional interpretations of our own creation myths in Genesis. I suppose
the best way to put it is that I am not hung up on the Bible as the only way I
hear the Word of God. While the bible does give us most of what we know about
Jesus, I also find that the heart of what Jesus taught is sometimes found in
other places. As I have made clear in other conversations we have had, I have
no need for the atonement as a doctrine. I don't believe that Jesus had to die
on the cross to appease an angry God. I believe these sort of doctrines are
unreasonable in today's world but that does in no way diminish my
belief that Jesus revealed to us the fullness of God (who is love) in our
humanity through his life and teachings. This is probably why I am finding the
current debate over homosexuality so frustrating. We are missing the point and
have reduced the arguement to how we interpret the authority of the Bible. The
question should be, how do we move forward in love rather than judgement?
Regardless of what the Bible might or might not say, if we live in love as we
have been encouraged do and accept this to be the way of Jesus that leads to
life, then we are arguing all wrong. Surely the questions we should be asking
are something like; are people who are in committed and loving same sex
relationships in any way bringing harm or pain to others. If the answer is no,
(I will exclude pain caused by fear and ignorance of homosexuality), then
their sexual orientation should never be a bar to their
ordination.
I personally think of the Bible as a speech
act of God. I think this is a far better defined idea, the theory of speech
acts was described by J L Austin in "How to do things with words". This idea
fits in with modern metaphysics and linguistics rather neatly, as well as with
conventional theology, and resolves a lot of the issues IMO. It gives a
framework where we can admit the obvious, that the Bible's human authors and
copiers and translators may have been inspired by the Spirit but this didn't
make them infallible. But at the same time we can affirm that God speaks
personally and miraculously through the Bible.
I sometimes use phrases
such as "hear the Word of God" when introducing a reading for example. It's a
traditional phrase and effective in a certain sort of liturgy. In this
experiential, global-thinking context I think it is well understood. But it's
not very precise IMO, and can be confusing in any linear-thinking situation.
So in prisons, primary schools, seeker services, serious discussions and many
other situations I try to avoid it.
- How is this any different to someone convincing someone else that the
Koran is the word of God?
I think that the Bible has an authority that the Koran does
not have. (Just saying that is a criminal offence in many countries, of
course.) I think this is *true*, so that it's not just something I have
decided to adopt personally, but rather something that everyone would benefit
by believing.
How about you? Do you regard the two of them as equally
authoritative? If not, what is special about the Bible? (I'm assuming you
don't prefer the Koran.)
Apart from the
occaisional browse, I have never read the Koran, nor do I feel the need to. I
was merely making the point that for someone who is a Muslim the Koran has the
same authority to them as the Bible does for a Christian. (Possibly more.)
What makes their belief that the Koran is the Word of God (and they do use
that terminology at times) any different to your belief that the Bible is
the Word of God? Are you (presumably an anglo saxon of Christian heritage)
somehow superior to them? You said yourself that "I think that the Bible
has an authority..." This is correct, you think. You have no other basis on
which to make the claim other than your own belief and cultural history.
Therefore I go back to my earlier statement, "The only real authority the
Bible has is that which you yourself bestow upon it."
- When I read the Bible as though it was the literal word of God I come
away thinking that this is a very confused God.
I think that this is more a case of a very confused
reader. I have commented previously on "literal" readings. They don't bear up
under close scrutiny. Agreed?
I agree, however that then raises the question of
how one reads the Bible and how ones decides what is
authorative?
- On one hand I read a verse in what is called the ten commandments that
says "thou shalt not kill" and then a few verses later this same God is
telling the same people to go and slaughter every living thing in the town
they are about to conquor.
Yes. I think the tension here was obvious even five
thousand years ago.
Such things don't trouble me. They are background
noise, but I don't think they make it difficult to hear the message.
- Ultimately I have to say that the Bible is a human creation that tells
about a particular race of people in a particular time and place and how
they tried to understand their experience of the mystery they called
God.
Hmmmm. Fair enough. But you also claim to be a
Christian, and I'm glad you have chosen to be one.
So I assume that
Jesus Christ has a special place in your life. Doesn't that make the
Scriptures he used special too? They are the OT of course. You deal with the
NT below.
- The NT basically relates to the experiences of a group of people who
had claimed Jesus as the messiah. These people had experienced in this man
what they believed to be the presence of God, or more correctly, they had
experieced the spirit of this man which they believed to be still with
them, even after his execution, in such a way that they found a way of
living and being that transcended anything they had experienced before.
They then went about telling his story in such a way as to demonstrate
that he was the messiah.
Fair enough. And I'd add that these people believed in
their message so strongly that only one of the Twelve Disciples seems to have
escaped martyrdom. These people had seen Jesus, they knew him, and they were
not taking an easy road in continuing to follow him after Easter.
Paul
says that if Christ did not physically rise from the dead, the whole Church is
misguided and pointless. Do you think he was just plain wrong when he said
this, or do you think he might be misquoted? Or is there another
explanation?
First of all you are wrong. Paul did not claim that
Jesus physically rose from the dead. Paul talked about Jesus being
raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15) but said nothing about a physical
resurrection. In fact if you keep reading towards the end of the chapter you
will find that he specifically denies that the old body is
resurrected. Since we have no personal account of Paul's
conversion experience (with the possible exception of 2 Corinthinans 11:1ff)
we are left with the story in Acts where once again their is no record of him
having an encounter with a physically resurrected Jesus. Paul was a Pharisee
who believed as was normal that there would be a general
resurrection from the dead at the end times but that resurrection
would be in a new imperishable body. Even Pauls claim to have experienced the
risen Christ cannot be interpreted as a 'seeing him in the flesh' type
experience. We could go into a discussion about what Paul might have meant by
God raising Jesus, but that would take a lot of time that I don't have. One
thing can be said with a degree of certainty though, and that is that Paul did
not believe that the old body of Jesus was physically raised from the
dead.
I'm sure you've heard these arguments and similar ones. But I'm
interested in how you answer them.
Personally, I think Paul did write
this, and that he was sincere and sane when he did. Which is quite a challenge
to me.
- I'm also under the authority of the Holy Spirit, and of the
Church. I expect these three to give the same message. If they don't I'm
worried. Two out of three doesn't win.
- It's not always easy to tell what God is saying. But my experience is
that for every time I seriously wonder what God is saying to me, there are
many others when I do know, and the problem is rather that I don't want to
do it.
- I believe that once again we are stumbling around our different
perceptions of God. I don't see God s a supernatural being who is trying
to talk to me.
Not everyone, however holy, hears the very words God
uses. Paul of Tarsus did. The Virgin Mary did. The prophet Samuel did. And
some people do in this day, I believe, but probably not many. They never were
very many in past ages, so I don't expect there to be many now. God chooses
them.
Did these people hear the very words of God? Where's
the evidence? I don't think Paul ever made such a claim. The stories of the
prophet Samuel is so clouded in cultural mythology that we wouldn't
have any idea. So too Abraham who was supposed to have had a meal with God.
The virgin? Mary's dialogue with God in Luke's gospel is a construction of the
story teller Luke some 90 years after the event and is largely fabricated
around Biblical (OT) stories. (Known as a Midrash) I have known people who
claim to have conversations with God but most of them seem to be talking to a
very confused God. Sometimes people will have mystical moments when they will
experience some special and pertinent revelation for them. These can
sometimes seem to be an audible type of experience and I would not want to
deny the reality of them for the particular person but whether or not we can
claim that it is God talking is another question.
I believe it's still possible to know what God wants of us,
even if we don't hear the exact words. But if you desire the gift of Prophecy,
let's start praying that you will receive it. Do you desire
it?
