I'm not extremely ecumenical. The
Lutherans (going old school now) of the LCA were, and the ALC and
LCMS were mostly and emphatically NOT (Lutheran Church in America,
American Lutheran Church (those two joined to form the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)), and Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod). Being ALC, the congregation I grew up in was NOT, to the
point of denouncing its own denomination for joining the National
Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. (We were
slightly to the right of Rush Limbaugh, had he been doing the talk
show bit back in the day.) We didn't have any other offshoots in
our neck of the woods. Bible churches are independent, for the
most part, and each congregation is on their own. The Southern
Baptist Convention, as you have pointed out, is not very
ecumenical, either.
I don't really know that much about non-Christian religions (which
is why you are the professor and I'm not). I have some books on
the subject, but they were largely written with conversion to
Christianity in mind.
If you have something already written, you can send it off list.
No need to do anything here unless you just want to and have the
time.
David
"Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of
what's good for people than people do is a swine."--P. J. O’Rourke
On 9/30/2011 12:29 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Absolutely yes.
There is more to say than just that, however.
See my e-mail about Michele Bachmann for one part of it.
Another part is that I am very ecumenical. Not just sort
of, or now and then
for special occasions, but as intrinsic to faith itself,
for which there are all
kinds of Biblical justifications.
Closest to any existing Church that covers some of my
beliefs is
Assyrian Christianity. But, needless to say, I am not
Assyrian. Main point
is that Eastern Christianity keeps alive all kinds of
traditions basically
unknown in the western world. More-or-less the way that
Western Christians
take the OT as intrinsic to faith, Eastern Christians,
the Assyrians anyway,
have a somewhat similar view of other pre-Christian
spiritual traditions
and not only the Hebrew Bible.
I really did teach Comparative Religion --or
equivalents-- over the course
of years. Selectively only, but nonetheless a great deal
of this has genuine
meaning to me. My first introduction to this kind of
outlook was during a sermon
by a Baptist pastor in Chicago who was talking about E.
Stanley Jones,
once a very famous Baptist missionary, part of his career
spent in India.
Jones also was very open to other religions --as long
as there was
no compromise with faith in Christ. Hard core SBC types
deny
this on principle, but my church at the time was ABC and
if the
SBC disagreed, OK, they're entitled to their opinion,
but I sure didn't
have to go along with it.
ABC and SBC at that time agreed on morality pretty much
up and down
the line, and on the centrality of Jesus for faith, and
both took a fairly
fundamentalist view of the Bible, but a good number of
chapters
and verses were interpreted to very different effect. Not
sure about this
but I got the idea that if E-Stanley Jones was SBC he
would have
been kicked out. But for me he was like a saint.
All kinds of other things since that time, many years
ago, about which
if you had a weekend and I was visiting Texas, we could
discuss for
48 hours straight, but best to skip it for now. Suffice
it to say that,
for just one example, I never saw a contradiction between
the things
in the Baptist church and my friendship with Rev Saito at
Chicagoland
Buddhist Church and the many Buddhist insights and truths
that I learned
there. But this is just to get things started.
So, if you're asking if I'm a Baptist the answer is
"no," but there
sure are a good number of Baptist values and ways of
looking at things
that are Baptist, no doubt about it. Its just that this
is basically only
the beginning of the story, not the be-all and end-all.
Could go into this is a lot of detail but for now this
expresses a few
important points. All kinds of things to say about the
Holy Spirit,
for which my point of reference is more original Jewish
tradition
than anything else, but I can't spend the time to flesh
it all out
in an e-mail.
Billy
-----------------------------------------------------------------
message dated 9/29/2011 9:33:52 P.M. Pacific Daylight
Time, [email protected] writes: Do
you hold to Christianity? If so, why?
David
"Anyone who
thinks he has a better idea of what's good
for people than people do is a swine."--P. J. O’Rourke
On 9/29/2011 10:13 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Comments in the
text :
message dated 9/29/2011 7:41:16 P.M. Pacific
Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes: This was an attempt
started whn you first posted this. I wanted to
think on it some more.
Your
annotations take a lot of stuff away. I'm not
sure that's to the benefit of theology. I
removed the unannotated article.
More below.
David
"Anyone
who thinks he has a better idea
of what's good for people than
people do is a swine."--P.
J. O’Rourke
On 9/25/2011 1:46 PM, [email protected]
wrote:
First, the essay as originally
published. Then my comments in BF
in an annotated version
which follows.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Annotated
Version
Why You Should Take Theology
Seriously
In J. I. Packer’s 1973 classic
Knowing God, he points out that
“ignorance of God --ignorance both of
his ways and of the practice of
communion with him-- lies at the root
of much of the church’s weakness
today.” And just how sure can
anyone be that he or she "knows God" ?
While it can be maintained that the
Bible is a prime source of revelation,
it cannot be maintained that it is only
Pure Revelation since, clearly, the
text was written by fallible human
beings. The various mistakes in the
text in various places --for instance
historical inaccuracies in Daniel or
the inconsistent lists of disciples in
the Gospels-- also tell us that flaws
of the writers are often in play. And
then there are conceptual issues.
Clearly, for example, there are at
least two very different strands in
the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament,
between the worldview of books like
Ecclesiastes and Esther and Jonah, for
example, and Deuteronomy and Jeremiah.
Moreover, beliefs notwithstanding, we
are given conceptions of
God in the Bible. The reality
of God, or your choice in
characterizing the nature of the
divine however you think of him or her
or the Unknowable Ultimate, is another
matter, and maybe the best the Bible
can give us, even if it really is the
best available, necessarily won't be
the final word. That is, it is
simplistic to the point of arrogance
to claim that "you" --anyone-- knows
God in an "all-questions-answered"
sense. That is not possible for any
of us. Hence the problem is one of the
inescapable need to
muddle through , somehow, despite
large areas of ignorance in our
understanding. Far from being a side
issue, the agnostic critique of
religious faith is absolutely
fundamental. The ignorance
to which Packer refers is first and
foremost theological. To some, the term
theology evokes images of scholasticism
and ivory tower elitism with little
practical use. However, the science What
"science" ? Where are the testable
hypotheses ? Where is the empirical
evidence as the word "empirical" is
understood by scientists ? As close
to a science as we can find is in the
writings of Thomas Aquinas, but even
that is more of a philosophy based on
deductive logic that anything else.
This kind of loose use of an important
word with serious meaning really
compromises language, and does so in a
dishonest way. Theology
is a form of philosophy if you want a
more-or-less valid comparison.
of theology
is simply the organized and systematic
study of God. Every Christian is called
to know God and if we deny that
responsibility then we deny what it
means to be Christian. Therefore every
Christian is to be a theologian in the
strictest sense of the word. Utterly
pretentious.
DRB: You are tempting me to fire up the
soft-copy version of The Baker Encyclopedia of
Christian Apologetics, When Skeptics Ask, and
When Critics Ask. With these
annotations, do you ascribe to Christianity
at all? If so, why?
Do I ascribe WHAT to
Christianity ? I don't understand the
question. What is it that
I am or am not
ascribing ? Can you clarify ? Thanks
I don't really like asking those
questions. I struggle to maintain status at
amateur theologian. Professional Theologians
from various seminaries vary in quality, so
I'm not going to guess what Packer (or this
author) means. Yes, it does sound
pretentious.
I think many in the American church
know God in the same way they know the
president --they know some facts
about him, where he lives, what he
does, and so on --but they do not
have a relational knowledge of the
actual person who is president. This
could be described as a cultural
theology. A biblical theology is more
akin to the relationship between a
child and a good parent. The child in
this sense has a much more intimate
knowledge that, through time and
maturation, transmits the character
and expectations of the parent.
Experience only confirms this
knowledge, producing trust, which in
turn fosters obedience. This
may well be one way to look at the
issue, but what says this is the
only way to do so ? Nothing.
After all, the Bible itself
sometimes says that it is best to
regard God as a friend. And that is
not the same as a parent-child
relationship. Sometimes it says that
what we should be doing, which is
emphasized by Paul, is thinking
deeply and as objectively-- as
truthfully-- as possible about
higher things and hard questions,
which, of course, is also a message
in the book of Job. Then there is
Song of Songs in which the love
between a man and woman is how we
should think about "theology." To
base one's understanding of theology
on a parent-child metaphor to the
presumed exclusion of other ways of
thinking is, quite simply, absurd. Others
may take seriously the study of the
president and his office, its history,
legal powers, and so forth, but this
is only theoretical since this
knowledge exists apart from any
relationship with the person who is
president. For many, this is their
approach to theology; it is only
theoretical knowledge that often
serves to “puff up” and make people
intellectually proud. In the end, they
may be more enamored with the office
of the president than they are the
person of the presidency.
DRB: Well, if one puts any stock into the
Lord's Prayer, it starts out with "Our
Father." So why not a parent? I don't know why
you are allergic to the term.
Here is
the quote, first sentence :
This may well be one way to look at
the issue, but what says this is the only way
to do so ?
The point isn't
that a parent metaphor is b-a-d but that to
make this the de facto
ONLY metaphor
is to ignore all the other metaphors in the
Bible. Not a good idea.
A proper biblical theology that every
follower of Christ should pursue is
one that seeks to know the character,
nature, and will of God as revealed in
Scripture so that they may live in a
way that pleases him. Are we
to believe that this is a simple
matter ? That this is an
open-and-shut case ?It would be nice
if it was, but how can anyone who is
realistic take that kind of outlook
? The world is a complicated place
and life is hardly a walk in the
park. There are trials and
tribulations everywhere even if, now
and then, islands of peace
and tranquility may exist
somehow. Besides, try as anyone
might, the testimony of "the" Bible
is sometimes difficult to discern.
This is because, or partly because,
the book is a library of texts by
different writers. How do you
reconcile the view of God in Ezra or
Nehemiah with the views in Proverbs
or the Gospel of John or the
Apocalypse ? A simple assertion
that they all say the same thing is
an evasion when you get down to
it. There are consistencies to be
found, but they may require a good
deal of serious questioning to
discover and, even then, some major
problem may remain that defy
solution --at least if you are
honest about where you may have
gotten to in your spiritual journey.
There is a practicality to
theology that produces relevant wisdom
for living in the real world. Some
refer to this as the Christian
worldview, which is really only
another way of referring to a coherent
biblical theology ;
it functions less as a set of academic
facts than as an analytical framework
for living properly. How can one
successfully live in the world without
knowing about the one who made and
continues to govern that world?
DRB: Packer, while Church of England all the
way, is also a Calvinist. Don't know about
Craven. (Never heard of him before this
article.) If one follows Calvin, for instance,
certain texts are often bent beyond recognition
as the Calvinist tries mightily (in some
instances) to justify limited atonement or
irresistible grace. This seems to be the
majority view with lots of Baptists and
Presbyterian evangelicals holding to it. I think
that they are building their theology backwards,
but they tend not to listen to me. The battle is
always about Biblical interpretation. While the
Calvinists build a "sound" biblical system, if
some of their fundamental assumptions are wrong,
then the whole thing collapses. They can't have
that, so they make up for their lack of clear
statements from the Bible of their tenets with
condescension and derision.
In John 17 : 3,
Jesus provides the best definition of
theology --he equates knowledge of
God with eternal life. Here, eternal
life is not merely a reference to our
experience after death, but a life
lived now that is qualitatively
different from our former lives and
the lives of those around us. In other
words, the greater our knowledge of
God, the more abundant is our
experience of life in Christ. This
is an unobjectionable and even
inspirational statement. Yet this is
not to say that it is definitive.
After all, John 17 : 3 is followed
by 17 : 4, and there are many other
related texts in the Bible. Verse 4,
for instance, tells us that the work
we do, presumably our chosen
profession, is important in our
understanding of spiritual things.
Or, in an alternative reading, God
gives each of us a mission on Earth
and we derive deep meaning from all
the tasks that a mission requires,
not as hurdles to jump over but as
opportunities to learn and grow.
Maybe think of this as each of us
having our own "labors of
Hercules" to accomplish, including
--at least by way of metaphor--
cleaning piles of horse manure in
the Augian stables. Another
perspective is found in Wisdom of
Solomon where it is the story of the
Shekinah that is crucial, she who
was with the Lord from the
beginning, his companion and the
source of wisdom for all mankind. In
other words, personally I sometimes
get rather annoyed by a tendency
among a class of Evangelicals who
insist that everything must be
reduced to the most simplistic
understanding anyone can think of,
and that --and nothing else-- is
the essence of Christian faith.
DRB: If you are going to decry simplicity,
then I suppose that you are in favor of
complexity. No? I think that people have been
adding their own restrictions to the
requirements for being or becoming a Christian
in order to make it difficult to get their
"badge of approval."
The
point is : What is the best way to think
about any of this ?
Best may mean
most realistic, most accurate, most to the
point, most persuasive,
and so forth.
It can mean simplest, easiest to
understand, most "on point." The complaint
wasn't about simplicity, but
about reduction of all ( to exaggerate )
issues
or beliefs to their most simple
form. At times that is the worst thing to do
even if, at other times, it is
the best. Very complex to puzzle through
many mysteries in the Bible. But
each part of the Sermon on the Mount
is simple yet ( mostly ) is
profound. It should be easy enough to figure
out
when to get your thinking cap on
and when you don't really need to
worry about levels of meaning or
parabolic concepts.
Remember, Jesus did speak in
parables and none have surface meaning.
You need to think them through to
get the point. Then there is Ephesians 5
which is all about the need for
being critical-minded, and Paul, in
chapters
10 and 13 in II Corinthians,
makes much of examining facts carefully,
etc,
My favorite verse on this subject
is from Hebrews 6 : 1 --
"Let us stop discussing the
rudiments of Christianity. We ought not to
be
laying over again the foundations
of faith..."
In recent weeks I have tried to offer
critical analysis and a thoughtful
response to Christendom’s collapse and
the lingering influence of the
Constantinian system. Many were
challenged and responded with
recognition that these are relevant
and serious questions that must be
considered if we seek to recover a
biblical understanding of the gospel
and the mission of the church. Others
however responded in ways that reveal
a lack of reliance upon proper
theology A "proper theology"
as defined Craven is not serious
theology at all. It is a species of
apologetics, a sub-field of
rhetoric. And this is
extolled as good "theology" ? What a
mischaracterization. and
instead rely on emotional impulse or
culturally induced ways of thinking,
which they attempt to validate by use
of selected proof texts.The
proof text approach is nowhere more
evident than in Craven's writing.
DRB: Well, that's what a Calvinist DOES.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
|
