Blue.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Jesus of the
Bible
> David Miller wrote:
>>> When a person says that they will always sin,
>>> this is the same thing as saying that they will
>>> always fail to love their brother.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> Hang on. Surely you don't hear anybody saying we
>> will always sin, or always fail to love.
>
> Yes I do hear that.
>>> When a person says that they will always sin,
>>> this is the same thing as saying that they will
>>> always fail to love their brother.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> Hang on. Surely you don't hear anybody saying we
>> will always sin, or always fail to love.
>
> Yes I do hear that.
Sigh. If by "always" you understand
"as long as we are in this life, on some occasions", then yes, you do hear
that. But someone might misapprehend your representation of our position as
"on every occasion".
> Debbie wrote:
>> The claim is that we will not do all the
>> loving that we ought.
>
> Hmmm. This statement can be taken different ways. In one way, I would
> agree with you, but in another way, I would not. What are you trying to
> say?
>> The claim is that we will not do all the
>> loving that we ought.
>
> Hmmm. This statement can be taken different ways. In one way, I would
> agree with you, but in another way, I would not. What are you trying to
> say?
I am saying that I (and you)
will fail to love, will act out of something other than unadulterated
love, numerous times between now and death.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> (This is a similar mistake to the one you made with
>> Lance's statement about interpretation, suggesting he
>> was making the claim that all interpretation was error.)
>
> I think you misunderstood me. I understand Lance's position to be that all
> of us have error in how we practice interpreting the Bible. Did I get that
> wrong?
> Debbie wrote:
>> (This is a similar mistake to the one you made with
>> Lance's statement about interpretation, suggesting he
>> was making the claim that all interpretation was error.)
>
> I think you misunderstood me. I understand Lance's position to be that all
> of us have error in how we practice interpreting the Bible. Did I get that
> wrong?
What you said was, "[The
statement that all teaching is interpretation] is not the same as saying that
all interpretation is error." And I am saying, of course it isn't, nobody was
claiming that it was the same. Nobody has claimed that all interpretation is
error, but rather that any of it might be. The practical upshot of this is
not that we should have no confidence at all as interpreters, but that we should
stop short of considering our interpretation as oracular, on the same
level with Scripture itself. There has to be the possibility of
changing one's mind.
> ...if Christine and I both tried to draw a picture of an object,
> Lance would look at each picture and say that each picture had it wrong in
> this way or that way. I look at both pictures and point out how they both
> are interpreting the same object, but differently for different reasons.
>>From my perspective, neither picture is wrong or faulty. They just differ
because of the varying talents, abilities, and perspectives of the painters.
But David, that is not what you say in practice. You
actually call the other person's picture a "doctrine of demons". You seem
to me to speak out of both sides of your mouth on this. Your subscription to
diversity, it turns out, is strictly an abstract ideal; I haven't seen it
in practice where a person's picture differs noticeably from yours.
Meanwhile, since Lance doesn't claim to have superior access to the object,
I think maybe what he would say is more like, "Careful now; let's keep in
mind they're both only pictures". But I agree with something I think
you have been suggesting at other times, though, which is that the perspective
problem is not so much with perspective on the object (we don't have
"perspective" on the object, in this analogy, since it is invisible) as
with "perspective" on the pictures. Sometimes, I am looking at yours upside
down through a green lens, and you have cut mine up into little squares and
rearranged the squares. --Or at least the part about you is true!
:-)
For me, error would be when somone draws the picture of
> something else entirely, or puts such a half hearted effort into it that the
> picture in no way resembles what it is meant to resemble.
> something else entirely, or puts such a half hearted effort into it that the
> picture in no way resembles what it is meant to resemble.
Ahem--not to mention any names. But of course, some
people when looking at a picture arrive at this judgment much more quickly than
others. I think--and I could be wrong--that what Lance has been trying
to establish, on various occasions, is whether any two people on TT
even agree on when to draw this conclusion. [BTW Lance: is this whole
discussion not reminiscent of Carver's
Cathedral?]
Here's my attempt at a statement that could be
unanimously amenned: "Jesus Christ is Lord." (If it ain't unanimous now, it
will be one of these days!)
Debbie
