Clare et al, I am not quite sure what the importance of proving either
'that the red letter bits are exactly what Jesus said' or 'jesus was absolutely perfect' The reason for the first is that proof of 'what someone said or didn't say' even today is problemattic exercise... For example even when we do have video recording of what (say John Howard said) we do not know what he didn't say, and we certainly cannot know for sure 'what he meant'... (wonder if he is sure he knows what he means sometimes :) In any communication there is a certain amount of uncertainty - add to this 2000 years and language distinctions and the whole excercise becomes harder... My personal opinion (and many differ from me) is that the gospel writers do not 'account word for word what Jesus said' and leave out much of his life - and yet highlight profoundly what Jesus was on about... and in so doing who God is and what God's will is. The reason for the second is that I reckon we as a society are hung up on perfection... I agree that Jesus was 'without sin' (and the theologians can debate what that means for hours) - however many of our modern ideas about perfection don't seem to square up with ancient ones (with respect to humans and morals and stuff)... For example if someone can be 'made perfect' then presumably before being perfect (probably a Greek concept) they were imperfect... I don't about you but in my understand of common language perfect + imperfect = imperfect... That last bit probably didn't make sense - suffice it to say that 'perfection' is highly overrated. I prefer the language of sin/ forgiveness / holiness and discipleship - to perfection/imperfection and moral tallying... (I know this is not what Clare and others were neccessarily talking about so feel free to let it 'go through to the keeper') Niall ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Clare Pascoe Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 09:32:33 +1000 >Greg Crawford wrote: > >>>I'm not sure you can ask that without going back to the discussion on >>>how we view the bible, can you? I certainly don't believe that all the >>>red letter bits in a red letter bible were spoken by Jesus, so that >>>would mean my approach to (and answer to) your question would be quite >>>different to someone who *did* believe those red letter bits were Jesus' >>>actual words. >> >> What criteria would you use to determine the relative authenticity of teaching >> attributed to Jesus? > >I don't. I just know that there are things in there that *can't* have >been said by Jesus if he was perfect (ie. inerrant), so I reject the >joint assumption that he was perfect and the bible is inerrant. But I >don't presume to judge what is and isn't his words. And I treat with >caution the decisions of those who do. > >Clare >*************************************************** >Clare Pascoe Henderson >http://www.clergyabuseaustralia.org >Clergy Sexual Abuse in Australia >Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >*************************************************** > > >------------------------------------------------------ >- You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] >- To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe >insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) >See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm >------------------------------------------------------ > ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
