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Bible Questions and Spiritual Discussion
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Lanny Carlson
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03/16/2011 17:16 |
I was a student in what was at the time a liberal United Methodist seminary,
and have not heard of any of the people to who you refer.
The theologians with who I was most familiar at the time were
Tillich, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Motlmann, Pannenberg, Niebuhr, etc.
As for the Document hypotheses of the Old and New Testament,
which would include the idea of "Q," the J,E,D,& P sources of the Pentateuch, etc.
is not related to the brand of "Higher Criticism" you mentioned,
but is related to "Source Criticism" and "Historical Criticism",
which seeks to understand Scripture in light of its historical setting and sources.
Even "Higher Criticism" in its broadest sense
is not inherently negative in its view of Scripture,
as even some prominent evangelicals have noted.
"There are also evangelicals who argue that the higher critical methods study texts of human origin, and that evangelicals, believing that the Bible has origins both human and divine, can appropriately use the higher critical methods."
http://www.theopedia.com/Biblical_criticism#Source_criticism
Grant Osborne suggests that "[higher critical methods] become enemies of the veracity of Scripture only when imbibed with the radical skepticism of negative criticism."
Carl F. H. Henry says, "What is objectionable is not the historical-critical method, but rather the alien presuppositions to which neo-protestant scholars subject it." When it is "freed from the arbitrary assumptions of critics," it becomes "highly serviceable as a disciplined investigative approach to past historical events."
Any method depends on who is using it and how it used and for what purpose.
As the Wikipedia Article on Biblical Criticism rightly states,
"The word 'criticism' is not to be taken in the negative sense of attempting to denigrate the Bible, although this motive is found in its history. Technically, biblical criticism simply refers to the scholarly approach of studying, evaluating and critically assessing the Bible as literature in order to understand it better."
(As far as I know, this approach to Scripture is not something in which Aliens
have shown much interest!)
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Lanny Carlson
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03/16/2011 17:33 |
As for the Barna article...
what an extremely narrow definition of a "Biblical world view"!
I would insist that a truly Biblical worldview
has to include adherence to the teachings of Jesus
about love for enemies, care for the poor,working for justice, etc.
The Sermon on the Mount is central to a biblical worldview,
but it isn't included in the six so-called "core beliefs".
(On the other hand, we do see included "the literal existence of Satan,"
an issue in which another current thread in the Forum
reveals divergent views and honest disagreement.)
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Ted C
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03/17/2011 09:13 |
I've got a pretty good definition for "biblical world view."
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
The Holy catholic church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.
Regarding these later Theologians, some of them were pretty good, and yet many of them were colored in their thought by secularism.
Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965)
"Throughout most of his works Paul Tillich provides an apologetic and alternative ontological view of God. Traditional medieval philosophical theology in the work of figures such as St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham tended to understand God as the highest existing Being, to which predicates such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, righteousness, holiness, etc. may be ascribed. Arguments for and against the existence of God presuppose such an understanding of God. Tillich is critical of this mode of discourse which he refers to as "theological theism," and argues that if God is a Being [das Seiende], even if the highest Being, God cannot be properly called the source of all being, and the question can of course then be posed as to why God exists, who created God, when God's beginning is, and so on. To put the issue in traditional language: if God is a being [das Seiende], then God is a creature, even if the highest one, and thus cannot be the Creator."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
Rudolf Karl Bultmann (August 20, 1884 – July 30, 1976)
"He defined an almost complete split between history and faith, called demythology, writing that only the bare fact of Christ crucified was necessary for Christian faith."
"His History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921) is still highly regarded as an essential tool for gospel research, even by scholars who reject his analyses of the conventional rhetorical pericopes or narrative units of which the Gospels are assembled, and the historically-oriented principles called "form criticism" of which Bultmann has been the most influential exponent: 'The aim of form-criticism is to determine the original form of a piece of narrative, a dominical saying or a parable. In the process we learn to distinguish secondary additions and forms, and these in turn lead to important results for the history of the tradition.' In 1941 he applied form criticism to the Gospel of John, in which he distinguished the presence of a lost Signs Gospel on which John, alone of the evangelists, depended. This monograph, highly controversial at the time, became a milestone in research into the historical Jesus. The same year his lecture New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Message called on interpreters to replace traditional supernaturalism with the temporal and existential categories of Bultmann's colleague, Martin Heidegger, rejecting doctrines such as the pre-existence of Christ"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bultmann
Jürgen Moltmann (born 8 April 1926)
"Moltmann cites the English pacifist and anti-capitalist theologian Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy as being highly regarded. However the inspiration for his first major work, Theology of Hope, was the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch's "Principle of Hope". Bloch is concerned to establish hope as the guiding principle of his Marxism and stresses the implied humanism inherent in mystical tradition. Bloch claims to identify an atheism at the core of Christianity, embodied in the notion of the death of God and the continued imperative of seeking the Kingdom....Moltmann was concerned to reject any notion of history as a closed system and to shift the stress from revelation to action: hope as the principle of revolutionary openness to the future."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Moltmann
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971)
I don't want to say anything bad about the originator of the Serenity Prayer. However he was a staunch social gospel advocate. "Niebuhr was a prominent leader of the militant faction of the Socialist Party of America, although he dismayed die-hard Marxists by calling their beliefs a religion, and a thin one at that." And, "His influence has been acknowledged by such recent leaders of American foreign policy as Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr
I don't have a problem with Biblical Criticism as a tool for understanding the Bible. I love, for example, the writngs of F.F. Bruce. My problem is with the wing of study which assumes the Bible is inherently deceptive (not what it claims) and then makes up arbitrary constructs to try to explain supposed shortcomings. If someone doesn't believe the Bible, that's fine. But calling theologians "Christian" when they reject orthodox theology has created the same language problem that C.S. Lewis points out in the beginning of "Mere Christianity":
"Far deeper objections may be felt-and have been expressed- against my
use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of
Christianity. People ask: "Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a
Christian?" or "May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far
more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who
do?" Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very
spiritual, very sensitive. It has every amiable quality except that of being
useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors
want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another,
and very much less important, word.
The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had
a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone "a
gentleman" you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact.
If you said he was not "a gentleman" you were not insulting him, but giving
information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a
gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an
M.A. But then there came people who said-so rightly, charitably,
spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully-"Ah, but surely the
important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but
the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman
should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than
John?"
They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course
a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same
thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a
man "a gentleman" in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of
giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is
"a gentleman" becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to
be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer
tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's
attitude to that object. (A "nice" meal only means a meal the speaker
likes.)
A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old
coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker
likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of
approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if
anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he
cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.
Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as
they might say "deepening," the sense of the word Christian, it too will
speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves
will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in
the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see
into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge.
It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not,
a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never
apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they
will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become
in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they
will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word
will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good.
Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful
purpose it might have served.
We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name
Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to "the disciples," to
those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its
being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they
should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some
refined, spiritual, inward fashion were "far closer to the spirit of Christ"
than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological,
or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all
understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine
lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than
to say he is not a Christian."
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Lanny Carlson
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03/17/2011 10:07 |
Ted,
As one who loves words,
and who recognizes how so many people
are like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass -
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'" -
I can appreciate C S Lewis' observation.
Nevertheless, it can still be difficult and challenging at times
to find a universally acceptable definition.
You use the Apostle's Creed as
"a pretty good definition for 'Biblical worldview.'"
But, aside from the fact that Jews might disagree,
even as a definition of a "Christian Biblical worldview,"
it falls short.
The Apostles Creed says,
"born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate."
Uh...what about the three years BETWEEN those two phrases.
Can we really say that the entire ministry of Jesus
can be reduced to a COMMA?
Or that the contents of that comma aren't an essential part
of a Christian Biblical worldview?
That was the point I was making in my response to the Barna article.
Jesus said that calling him "Lord" was irrelevant if we didn't obey his commands.
So a truly Christian Biblical worldview must - by any reasonable definition -
acknowledge the teachings and ministry of Jesus.
I appreciate your taking the time to research some of the theologians I mentioned.
I have points of agreement and disagreements with all of them.
In seminary, it was common for some of us to say,
"I am a Barthian" or "I am a Tillichian."
But we were falling prey to the temptation Paul saw in 1 Corinthians 1.
While we will naturally gravitate
to some scholars' points of view more than to others,
we always need to be careful not to simply equate any theologians viewpoint
with THE "Christian Biblical worldview."
(And that would include C.S. Lewis).
And the same goes for our personal points of view.
While it is possible, as someone said,
"to become so broad minded that we become empty headed,"
we still must be careful about equating
what we define as a Biblical worldview
as THE final word on the subject.
Lewis is right -
"It is only a question of using words so that we can all
understand what is being said."
But that is a far greater challenge than he seems to acknowledge.
And that's why we get into these long -
though hopefully civil and respectful - discussions!
Thanks for your comments, Ted,
and thanks for this DAB community.
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Ted C
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03/17/2011 11:04 |
Thank you, Lanny, for the civil discussion. I believe it makes a world of difference to clarify what people believe. As A.W. Tozer says in Chapter 1 of "Knowledge of the Holy", "Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true." As the old saying goes, sow a thought and reap an action; sow an action and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny. That's why I believe that a person's theology is so fundamentally important, and why I'm a stickler for clarification.
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John T
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03/20/2011 21:40 |
Thanks Ted for all the wonderful writings. That bit on "gentlemen" was something very new to me and I enjoyed learning it. I too, believe that the apostles creed is an excellent summation of some of the most important points of Christ, we use it in our church as well. Very important. It points out some amazing truths of Christianity -- that it was God who created (therefore there is a creator), that Jesus was born of a virgin - very important for him to be the sinless lamb, that he died for our sins - also very important, since without that sacrificial death we would have to suffer the penalty ourselves! There are so many wonderful truths in that paragraph!
Blessings,
John
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Brian Hardin
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03/21/2011 21:26 |
Wow. Had no idea this was afoot. Interesting dialog. Lot's of dogma and google search and wiki pastes.
I mentioned "Q" because i think it's very possible. I didn't state it as fact. I think I spoke what I think of Luke. "Q" is actually quite a bit more possible than the UFO thing. That was a good laugh. It is indeed very possible that someone, somewhere tried to go around and write down everything Jesus said. It wouldn't be unlikely at all that a person, church or group would try to find everyone they could that actually heard Jesus speak and write down His sayings. There's nothing liberal or discrediting about that notion. Where in the world (and by what stretch of logic) would the existence of such a document discredit the inspiration of Scripture as a whole or the book of Luke in particular?
I believe Scripture to be inspired completely. My whole life is based around that fact. I also know that it was inspired through man and some of the mechanics of how that happened are explored by scholars. Not all modern or past scholarship was intended to discredit this or anything else. Not hardly. Most Biblical scholarship is intended to understand more fully what God was saying, to whom, how it would have been received and how it has been historically interpreted. Therefore, understanding when Luke was written is a fair quest. It would explain the original audience and that's actually important to understanding why God chose a specific time and place to inspire the writing. This roots the inspired Scripture in a time and place rather than a random occurrence. Knowing why God chose that time and place and how the original readers would have understood the inspired Scripture keeps us from making the Scriptures American or "now" or anything else that we'd like to force them to say. It's an important safeguard away from some of the modern scholarship that would discredit it altogether. Not the opposite.
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Ted C
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03/22/2011 10:40 |
I think it's entirely possible all four narratives were based on a single account in circulation back in the day. I just think it's wrong to assume out of secular philosophical bias that they aren't in essence the teachings of the purported authors, that they were erroneously attributed or that supernatural elements were added to the texts in later centuries. Most people who make assumptions like these accompany their assumptions with wild theories that have zero evidential proof.
If the writings are not what they say they are, we are left with Lewis' Trillema (There's good old C.S. Lewis again!) Jesus claimed to be divine and claimed to be the only way to God. This means either He was the Son of God, He was mad or He was evil. The choices are Liar (He claimed to be God and knew he wasn't), Lunatic (He claimed to be God and thought He was, but was mentally ill) or Lord (He claimed to be God and Is God). If someone argues that the elements of Lewis' Trillemma were added after the fact, they are still left with the widely documented fact that all of the 12 apostles suffered torture or horrible executions for believing that Jesus is God and the only way to God. Why would someone willingly suffer inverted crucifixion for a lie designed to get them glory and fame? The fact of the apostles' willing deaths is - in and of itself - evidential proof for the authenticity of the Gospels.
I've given my testimony to the point that every time I put it out there I deliver it almost word for word the same. And I've heard some speakers give the same message over and over to the point where I can deliver their messages myself almost word for word. I think it's likely that in travelling from town to town and retelling the narrative over and over the apostles came to a bit of a consensus regarding the basic elements of what they'd been through, and then liked to add their own details to make their testimonies personal.
You're right; comparing this possibility to UFOs is a little over the top! Now I'm laughing myself!
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Brian Hardin
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03/27/2011 01:01 |
Yes indeed to what you're saying but......who ever said anything to the contrary?
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Sarajane8
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03/30/2011 04:19 |
Hmmm....Interesting, good debate :)
You all seem very knowledgeable .
May I ask what of the 14 books that have been left out of our Bible?
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