On the side bar, under the name of someone whose name I’ve hidden. I know they are new to this, but it looks sad!
Category: Uncategorized Page 22 of 71
Too early to assess this book
“The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects….” (page 51)
(Pictured is the only cat ever allowed to live in my house, which my daughter brought home and hoped to endear to me by giving him the name ‘Calvin’. Nice try.)
The Bible presents a strong case for the death penalty. Because of that I have for most of my adult life supported it as a necessary aspect of honoring the image of God in humanity.
However, asked the other day whether I am a supporter or not, I had to say that I was not. Capital punishment may have its place in a context of justice, but where justice is elusive, I question its use.
Two things in particular shake my confidence in our ability as humans to adequately apply such a final judgment. The first is the inequality of the judicial process, fueled by money. If you are rich, normally white, you can afford a clever and skilled defense team, and stand a far better chance of being freed. If you are poor, normally black, and can’t afford a strong defense, you are more likely to be convicted and condemned. This is an inequity that I cannot countenance.
The other reality which shakes my confidence is the possibility of wrong convictions. When a man imprisoned for life is shown to be innocent, there is at least a chance for him to regain some experience of life. When one who is executed is exonerated, it is too late.
My convictions were formed prior to reading this article, but it is a fascinating story which reminds us that the uncertainty of human judgment may have tragic consequences. Do any of us as human beings really want to have such power over life and death?
This is really hard to fathom.
I always want to give people in these situations the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure the school officials here really are bound by the law and have no choice. I suspect that they see this as being as absurd as I do.
But when we attempt to regulate every behavior by law and not wisdom this is what results.
I suppose that the next time Zachary or any other wants to take out the eyes of a classmate (a fear mentioned in the article), he’ll need to use a pencil.
Oh, wait… are those still allowed?
N. T. Wright uses this sentence to demonstrate how important it is that we read a text in the context of its author, its audience, and its cultural and historic setting:
“I’m mad about my flat.”
To understand this sentence, we must know whether the speaker is American or British. Will the speaker soon be heading off to the tire store, or will he be showing off his new living quarters?
We may believe in the inerrancy of the biblical text, but if we are careless in reading it, what we read in that inerrant biblical text may be errant if we fail to read it as the author and audience in that cultural and historic setting would have heard it.
I’ve been reading The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries. Stark is a sociologist asking the question which the subtitle states. He notes that when Constantine gave Christianity official recognition in the 4th century, he was bowing as much to the inevitability of numbers as he was to principle. Christianity simply grew and overwhelmed the empire.
Stark is not a Biblical scholar, nor an historian. He calls himself ‘a sociologist who sometimes works with historical materials.’ I am not sure whether with that admission he is inviting us to question his historical conclusions, but they are nevertheless fascinating.
Some are more well known – that Christianity grew through greater fertility, with prohibitions against abortion and infanticide, common practices in the ancient world among pagans. Christianity grew as well through a willingness to nurse and care for those suffering through plague and other culturally devastating diseases.
Two things, however, in my reading have challenged my perceptions of the ancient world and how one reads the biblical text in the light of that.
First, he makes a strong historical case that women were granted great authority in the early church, particularly functioning as deacons. My denomination appoints only men to the office of deacon, and this has been a subject of significant debate recently. Stark makes an intriguing case for seeing that women were indeed accepted as deacons from the earliest days.
Intriguing to me as well is this:
The epistles of 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter both give instruction to Christian women regarding how to behave when married to non-Christian husbands. We who read that today make the assumption that this was pertinent to the (assumed) many women who were converted after marriage to non-Christian men. No doubt this situation existed. But Stark notes that in the church, because the church treated women with far greater equity and decency, the proportion of women to men was lopsided. The result was that for the Christian girl of marriageable age, there were not Christian men enough to go around. It is possible, therefore, that our assumption that the counsel of Paul and Peter was only to women who converted post-marriage may in fact be wrong. The early church may not have encouraged marriage outside of covenantal considerations, but it certainly may have been forced to permit it.
I’m not making any case for changing how we counsel young men and women regarding marriage partners. That’s not the point. The point is for biblical interpreters to be diligent to know the context of the biblical text and to take care how they interpret and apply that text. We handle God’s word. People will hear it preached as God’s word. And if we speak what is NOT God’s word, we are wielding a dangerous weapon carelessly which may do more harm than good.
I’ve had no time since returning from our trip to prepare some proper posts. However, I have had occasion to read C. S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy (plundered from my Half Price Books raid a couple weeks ago) and was struck with his reflections upon his conversion to theism. I’ve heard/read portions of this before, but this morning was compelled to read it multiple times.
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not see then what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words comppelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (pages 228-229)
Don’t get excited. I’m not really very far going down this path.
But it is clear that both science (an aspect of general revelation) and the Bible (the product of special revelation) must, as they illumine the works of God, be in agreement. Where there is disagreement, the issue is one of interpretation, not essence. Our biases impact our interpretation of scripture, and so we might get it wrong. As well, our biases impact our interpretation of scientific data, and we might get it wrong. The fundamentalist Bible believer runs the risk of assuming that his interpretation of the Bible is infallible. It is not. And the equally fundamentalist devotee of science runs the risk of assuming that the interpretation given to natural phenomena is infallible. It is not.
So, the two forms of revelation, though in essence infallible, are as observed and interpreted open to error and therefore must inform one another.
I was reminded of this while researching commentary on Psalm 93 which says that under the reign of God, “…the world is established; it shall not be moved.”
About this, John Calvin, writing in the middle of the 16th century, about the same time that Copernicus published his work removing the earth from its position at the center of the universe, says this:
“The Psalmist proves that God will not neglect or abandon the world, from the fact that he created it. A simple survey of the world should of itself suffice to attest a Divine Providence. The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion — no disturbance in the harmony of their motion.”
Charles Spurgeon, writing 300 years after Calvin and Copernicus, comments on the same passage saying this:
“Society would be the football of the basest of mankind if God did not establish it, and even the globe itself would fly through space, like thistle-down across the common, if the Lord did not hold it in its appointed orbit.”
Neither man was interpreting scripture improperly. They were, however, seeing it through a different conceptual grid which had been effected by scientific inquiry and discovery. I simply find the contrast here interesting, and it serves as a reminder to me that fundamentalists of both the biblical and scientific types ought always be aware of the glasses they wear.
I get it!
Today.
I’m a happy (geeky) camper.