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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Bible for Grown Ups
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Cherubim
Apprentice
# 18514
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Posted
There is a recently published book called "The Bible for Grown Ups". I heartily recommend this to all. The author explains the areas of contradiction and posits reasons why different writers wrote accounts that were clearly factually untrue, and why in the context of the time this was unimportant. There is only folly to look at the bible through the eyes of a 21st Century Christian. For example, whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen, this book explains why she couldn't have been a virgin and why Jesus was born in Nazareth and couldn't have been born in Bethlehem.
I especially recommend this to fundamentalist Christians.
Posts: 10 | From: Charlton | Registered: Nov 2015
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
For example, whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen, this book explains why she couldn't have been a virgin and why Jesus was born in Nazareth and couldn't have been born in Bethlehem.
Glad we've got that sorted out at last, then.
quote:
I especially recommend this to fundamentalist Christians.
Not sure how many fundamentalist Christians you know, but I'm doubting this kind of knowitall writing would have an impact on them whatsoever.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Sounds rather simple-minded.
If large chunks of the human race hold particular opinions, it's rarely wise to just dismiss them all as not being grown-ups, or to assume that they have no foundations for their beliefs.
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
For example, whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen, this book explains why she couldn't have been a virgin and why Jesus was born in Nazareth and couldn't have been born in Bethlehem.
Glad we've got that sorted out at last, then.
quote:
I especially recommend this to fundamentalist Christians.
Not sure how many fundamentalist Christians you know, but I'm doubting this kind of knowitall writing would have an impact on them whatsoever.
I was one for 30 years and I've have laughed this to scorn. Now I'm a raving, postmodern liberal, I still laugh it to scorn. Bye Cherubim. It was brave of you to foray out from the shallow self congratulatory safety of 'atheist republic' and 'The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official)', but you must get back home before you get et.
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Love wins
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
I haven't read the book (only the "look inside" bit on Amazon which seems quite unexceptionable).
But the "Spectator" review seems to suggest that it's taking us back to the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" of over a century ago. If that is true (and it may only be the reviewer's perception) than it's hardly new (but, then, nor was "Honest to God").
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I would like a good 'Bible for grown ups', though. I remember first reading EP Saunders, Phyllis Trible, Michael Goulder, Theissen, Crossan, Ched Myers and others. Wonderful, disturbing, exciting experiences, having my mind forced open.
I'm all for grown up bible study, but it doesn't usually come in a book with that on the cover.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I remember first reading EP Saunders, Phyllis Trible, Michael Goulder, Theissen, Crossan, Ched Myers and others.
Crossan, really? ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
He's rather like a marble amongst the bowling balls of the rest of that list.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I remember first reading EP Saunders, Phyllis Trible, Michael Goulder, Theissen, Crossan, Ched Myers and others.
Crossan, really?
He's rather like a marble amongst the bowling balls of the rest of that list.
Really? I'm not in academia so I don't know how Crossan is seen there, but for connecting with a wide readership and promoting a comprehensive take on the New Testament, taking social anthropology seriously, I think he's very significant.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
Crossan's credibility suffered a lot by his co-founding and subsequent involvement with the Jesus Seminar. Out of that group, only Marcus Borg escaped from the group with anything resembling a serious reputation.
Crucial to Crossan's hermeneutical gymnastics was his addition to whatever was novel, particularly the gnostics. He construed various "gospels" from 2nd and 3rd century texts and claimed (without evidence) that they represented much older traditions than those which lay behind the canonical gospels.
Ultimately, his contribution to biblical scholarship is on a par with Ken Ham's contribution to biology.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Ultimately, his contribution to biblical scholarship is on a par with Ken Ham's contribution to biology.
Ouch!
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Crossan's credibility suffered a lot by his co-founding and subsequent involvement with the Jesus Seminar. Out of that group, only Marcus Borg escaped from the group with anything resembling a serious reputation.
Crucial to Crossan's hermeneutical gymnastics was his addition to whatever was novel, particularly the gnostics. He construed various "gospels" from 2nd and 3rd century texts and claimed (without evidence) that they represented much older traditions than those which lay behind the canonical gospels.
Ultimately, his contribution to biblical scholarship is on a par with Ken Ham's contribution to biology.
Reputation with whom? Are you talking as an academic insider, Sipech?
I know that Crossan made use of hypothetical early gospels in his studies on Jesus. Not really so unusual. Proto-Luke, proto-Matthew, Q, and sometimes layers within Q have often been posited and argued from. Crossan added Thomas and may have elaborated others. He offers a grid of sources which can be consulted to see which sayings and stories are closest to Jesus, and argues that this treatment of sources helps check the human tendency to make judgements according to personal preferences. I think I remember that he also discusses the danger of circularity in evaluating constructed sources.
In more recent books he has relied more on anthropology and cultural readings.
I am only familiar with his mass market books, though.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I haven't heard of this book before, and it's unlikely that I will be reading it. There are already too many other books I haven't read.
However, if a book claims to be "The Bible for Grown Ups" then spends all its inky energy on arguments about the virgin birth, it isn't really living up to its title. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be The Bible for clever but still rather spotty adolescents.
IMHO the point when one begins to grow up is when one starts to have a relationship with the text and to let it have a relationship with you. Regarding it as a textbook for living that one must simply obey or a manual that one has grown out of and can sit in judgement over both fall badly short.
I can't express this all that clearly, but as years have gone by, I find the scriptures more authoritative, not less. I'd be hard put to explain exactly how I mean that, save that:-
a. Neither Lev 11:19 nor Deut 14:18 mean that we are obliged to classify a bat as a bird.
b. We should take the narrative seriously. We should not bowdlerise out the bits we don't like. Their presence in the text is not an endorsement that we should - or are entitled to - behave like the people we meet in its pages. Whatever we draw from the text, we should engage seriously with it, what the writer selected, and what we think they might be trying to say.
c. One has to be a conceited ass to be persuaded by the argument 'they were primitive people who believed in miracles, but we know better'. They knew just as well as we do that in the normal way of things, sick people are not healed, neither loaves nor fishes multiply from nothing and people do not walk on water. That's why they called the events miracles and in each case is one of the two reasons why they recorded them as something exciting?
The other reason, the reason why they selected that miracle, rather than another one, is that the event is saying something about Jesus, who he is, why he is here, what he does.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
I've not read the book, beyond a quick skim on Amazon look-inside, so this may be very wild of the mark. But ...
There's a tendancy in books marketted at evangelicals to give answers. The string of "difficult passages in the Bible" books are usually good examples, they present the solution the author has to remove the difficulty in the passage. Or, the "how to read the Bible" books which present a very narrow perspective of what the author finds useful. I fear this book may fall into the same category, presenting what is "the adult understanding of these passages".
This is something I find really irritating, and why I've largely abandoned reading books aimed at the evangelical mass market.
You tell things to children. Adults are capable of working things out themselves. A book entitled "The Bible for Grownups" shouldn't be giving answers, as though the readers were children in a class room. It should be enabling adults to be adults and explore the questions themselves (in community, with help from others etc).
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I want to see the books of the Bible published separately or in collections, without the traditional look of a Bible - the India paper and double columns, gold edges and tooling. With no verse or chapter numbers, no headings or illustrations.
I would like the printing and style of translation to make the books look and feel different from each other.
Psalms might be printed one to a page, like a faber and faber poetry book.
Galatians and other short epistles could be on one piece of paper folded several times.
The individual gospels could be slim leather bound books easily slipped into a pocket or a bag.
The Pentateuch should be beautiful, like a Folio edition; heavy paper and hard covers. The sort of book you can only read at a desk or table.
Joshua and Judges should be ugly, printed on cheap paper in a Soviet press specially started up again for this Bible project.
The Book of Ruth should be beautifully handwritten - not a reproduction, each copy should be handwritten and priced accordingly.
And so on. I hate the way we have turned these extraordinary books into "the Bible", with one consistent style, and with helpful aids to the reader. I want people to stumble across a passage one day and then never be able to find it again. I want them to be able to tell when they open a book of Wisdom Literature that it's not the same as prophecy just by the road surface. I want some of it to feel unfriendly, some of it intensely foreign, all of it incredibly old: undomesticated. Perhaps it should be called the Feral Bible.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I like your idea (have you come across The word on the street?), but I have to take exception to this: quote:
I hate the way we have turned these extraordinary books into "the Bible"
The only reason the Bible has come down to us is as a collection of books recognised as such by our forefathers in the faith.
The parts are all good, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and needs to be borne in mind.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Joshua and Judges should be ugly, printed on cheap paper in a Soviet press specially started up again for this Bible project.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) You'd not do that to me, would you???
More seriously, the problem with formatting bits of it as "unfriendly" or what-have-you is that there is no clear agreement on which bits to treat that way. And your version of "unfriendly" differs from mine (I'd never handwrite a book I actually wanted to read, and that's not just because my handwriting is dreadful).
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
Isn't the Bible itself often portrayed as the one book with all the (important) answers?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
More like the book with all the important questions.
(Sorry, that was just too easy to pass up).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The Bible has one anciently mediated answer. Jesus. The ancient mediation creates more necessarily bizarre questions which cloud the answer.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I've not read the book, beyond a quick skim on Amazon look-inside, so this may be very wild of the mark. But ...
There's a tendancy in books marketted at evangelicals to give answers. The string of "difficult passages in the Bible" books are usually good examples, they present the solution the author has to remove the difficulty in the passage. Or, the "how to read the Bible" books which present a very narrow perspective of what the author finds useful. I fear this book may fall into the same category, presenting what is "the adult understanding of these passages".
This is something I find really irritating, and why I've largely abandoned reading books aimed at the evangelical mass market.
You tell things to children. Adults are capable of working things out themselves. A book entitled "The Bible for Grownups" shouldn't be giving answers, as though the readers were children in a class room. It should be enabling adults to be adults and explore the questions themselves (in community, with help from others etc).
Yes this!
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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St Deird
Shipmate
# 7631
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen
We do? Gosh.
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They're not hobbies; they're a robust post-apocalyptic skill-set.
Posts: 319 | From: the other side of nowhere | Registered: Jun 2004
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
Was the Virgin Birth really an issue when the New Testament was written? Apparently not for the writers of Mark and John--and, to my knowledge, none of the epistles mention it or even allude to it. Revelations does hint about it. The most important issue is the resurrection--all else is of little consequence.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The Resurrection of whom?
[ 22. September 2016, 20:20: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
Dang me, that's the sort of purty picture talk that us ordinary folks can get a handle on!
Not like that fancy-pantsy, big-city talk theys is always usin' on this Ship.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
I especially recommend this to fundamentalist Christians.
One of my rules that I use when reading book reviews is that if the reviewer especially recommends a book to the people with whom he (or less often she) disagrees, the book is probably not much good.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
A single explains-everything-for-you book is unlikely to have the depth of a frog pond in August.
Dang me, that's the sort of purty picture talk that us ordinary folks can get a handle on!
Not like that fancy-pantsy, big-city talk theys is always usin' on this Ship.
Yeah, well, I grew up 30 feet from a Southern California frog-oops-toad pond, and I know whereof I speak. In August you could walk over the cracked ground and hear the toads chirping a foot underground.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St Deird:
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen
We do? Gosh.
Well, I always knew I was not a clear thinker. Me and the White Queen are buds: We sometimes believe six impossible things before breakfast.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I'm aware that in my heart of hearts I haven't quite given up on naive realism when I find I very much want to disprove the Virgin Birth, and compel people to agree with me.
The frustrations of the "it's just a story" position - there's no way back out.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Yeah, well, I grew up 30 feet from a Southern California frog-oops-toad pond, and I know whereof I speak. In August you could walk over the cracked ground and hear the toads chirping a foot underground.
Here in SW UK our frog pond is pretty much the same depth all the year round. It just the water is a bit colder in Winter. Not sure what metaphor you could make of that.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
Posts: 794 | From: here or there | Registered: Jun 2012
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Gosh, it must have been a wet Thursday in an English November when Shakespeare wrote that!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
I don't know about the book, but I'm fascinated with toads chirping underground. We don't have then here.
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
They estivate. Apparently being sort-of asleep doesn't stop them from making noises as you walk overhead. I know that's what it is, because being an inquiring sort of girl at age 12, I helped a friend lever a dirt clod up so we could see what was down there. The toad looked mildly surprised to see us, and we carefully put the clod back into place.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Cherubim--
Welcome to the Ship.
quote:
Originally posted by Cherubim:
There is a recently published book called "The Bible for Grown Ups". I heartily recommend this to all. The author explains the areas of contradiction and posits reasons why different writers wrote accounts that were clearly factually untrue, and why in the context of the time this was unimportant. There is only folly to look at the bible through the eyes of a 21st Century Christian. For example, whilst most clear thinkers know that Mary wasn't a virgin and the Bethlehem account just didn't happen, this book explains why she couldn't have been a virgin and why Jesus was born in Nazareth and couldn't have been born in Bethlehem.
I especially recommend this to fundamentalist Christians.
Hmmm...well...hmmmm.
I don't know what did or didn't happen. But I don't have a problem with the Virgin Birth, miracles, the Resurrection, etc.
"...why [Mary] couldn't have been a virgin..." Well, I suspect most adults then (and now) had some idea of how pregnancy happens, even if we moderns might explain the intricacies a bit differently. And they owned domesticated animals, or were at least around them. So they had more opportunities to figure out how it all works.
ISTM that starting out with an "it can't possibly be true" perspective can block your (gen.) mind just as much as "of course, it's all true". So if you (gen.) want to do more than confirm your own biases, if you want to really find truth, then you have to put your preconceptions of impossibilities aside. "Believe nothing. Entertain possibilities." (Anon.)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly). I think it's good to write a book explaining how you can read and value the Bible without having to suspend disbelief. I am concerned when Christians are proud of their ability to hold unusual beliefs.
[ 25. September 2016, 07:27: Message edited by: hatless ]
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
I think that even when Christians doubt the Virgin Birth, it tends to be for reasons different from those of secular society.
If one doesn't believe in the Incarnation as traditionally understood, one has no reason to believe in the Virgin Birth. If one does believe in the Incarnation, then one's reasons for scepticism will be philosophical or theological rather than empirical - it's not as if there's a series of other Incarnations without Virgin Births that we can use to derive counterexamples. So for example, I do mostly believe in the Virgin Birth but insofar as I have doubts, they relate to issues like the potential mistranslation of Isaiah rather than anything a normal person would be concerned by ...
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly). ...
Up to a point Lord Hatless. It's an important point that we need to be making, that we live in a God designed universe and aspire to have a God designed worldview. Some of the time, that may be broadly similar to everyone else's worldview. But when it isn't, we need to be willing to say so. Accommodation to the prevailing worldview of those around us can be, and often is, taken too far.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
How so?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly).
Are you under the impression that "everyone else" holds essentially the same worldview??? That is most assuredly not the case. So how are we to decide which of the multiple, competing worldviews present in society we should conform to?
I get what you're saying about not making a point out of being odd for the sake of being odd-- but there is certainly some value in being distinctive, at least if those distinctives are built around critical, reflective, reasonably moral thinking.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly).
When that worldview is neoliberal, I think it is not good.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly).
Are you under the impression that "everyone else" holds essentially the same worldview??? That is most assuredly not the case. So how are we to decide which of the multiple, competing worldviews present in society we should conform to?
I get what you're saying about not making a point out of being odd for the sake of being odd-- but there is certainly some value in being distinctive, at least if those distinctives are built around critical, reflective, reasonably moral thinking.
I was thinking of worldview in the sense of understanding how the world works, as in things like probability, theories and evidence. We should certainly be distinctive in our values.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I was thinking of worldview in the sense of understanding how the world works, as in things like probability, theories and evidence. We should certainly be distinctive in our values.
The distinction between probability, theories and evidence on the one hand, and values on the other, is one of the foundational planks of neoliberalism.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
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Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
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Originally posted by hatless:
'Clear thinking' is an offensive term, but I think it's good for Christians to inhabit the same worldview as everyone else (mostly).
Are you under the impression that "everyone else" holds essentially the same worldview??? That is most assuredly not the case. So how are we to decide which of the multiple, competing worldviews present in society we should conform to?
I get what you're saying about not making a point out of being odd for the sake of being odd-- but there is certainly some value in being distinctive, at least if those distinctives are built around critical, reflective, reasonably moral thinking.
I was thinking of worldview in the sense of understanding how the world works, as in things like probability, theories and evidence.
Again, there is no universal worldview of "how the world works"-- but a bunch of competing idealogies. How you read things like "probabilities, theories and evidence" is influenced by the assumptions you hold about reality.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
If we believe the world is God's world, then I think this must be something we believe is true about the world everybody lives in. It can't be an add-on for Christians.
An example of the sort of thing I'm thinking about is the cute idea of God-incidences. Something unusual and striking is noticed and one person says what an amazing coincidence it is. Another says, 'Well I believe in God-incidences', meaning that this is a message from God, or a sign of God's approval. In doing that that seem to me to be opting out of the world view that we share in common, which is that sometimes, often things just happen, and our lives are not full of deliberate interventions.
That's not to say that talking of God-incidences might not be simply a way of saying 'I see a God in this' just as we might see God in a rainbow, and not be challenging meteorological understandings, but offering an overlaying understanding. It could be this, but often, I think, it's denying the common world view and asserting that the world is a different sort of place, with interventions from outside.
There are, of course, many Christians who will say that, if Jesus was God, then he could do anything, or if I pray about some situation, then all normal expectations are suspended, because this world is subject to intervention from God as the characters and events of a novel are subject to interference by its author. But it seems to me that to do this is to uncouple faith from the real world, and to make God something less than creator, a being within the world that some people choose to believe in.
The sort of belief we have in the Virgin Birth is an issue. If you read the biblical texts in order to find out what happened, where Jesus was born and when, who his parents were and what were their circumstances - a perfectly reasonable thing to do - then a pregnancy without sex and sperm is a problem. It's something which in our shared world, which is God's world, according to our common understanding doesn't happen.
To say that it's a miracle, or that the Bible says it and I simply choose to believe it is, I think, a violent act. It trivialises, it breaks faith with our fellow humans and, I would say, the God whose world it is.
There are other ways of believing in the Virgin Birth, of course, understandings that don't do a violence to our world view (a world view which I regard as a precious and hard won thing), and which allow us to stay in dialogue with our neighbours rather than leaping off into some anti-rational mindset. These are the powerful and fruitful ways I think we need to seek.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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St Deird
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# 7631
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The sort of belief we have in the Virgin Birth is an issue. If you read the biblical texts in order to find out what happened, where Jesus was born and when, who his parents were and what were their circumstances - a perfectly reasonable thing to do - then a pregnancy without sex and sperm is a problem. It's something which in our shared world, which is God's world, according to our common understanding doesn't happen.
People also don't tend to come back to life. If we profess one, why not the other?
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They're not hobbies; they're a robust post-apocalyptic skill-set.
Posts: 319 | From: the other side of nowhere | Registered: Jun 2004
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shamwari
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# 15556
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Posted
Because we believe that Jesus was Truly Man as well as Truly God. You must not compromise His humanity
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Neoliberalism means small government, unregulated markets, and privately owned media.
Exactly hatless. We're talking a philosophical worldview, not a mere technocratic economic one which is informed by an impoverished philosophy.
[ 26. September 2016, 09:14: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
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Originally posted by shamwari:
Because we believe that Jesus was Truly Man as well as Truly God. You must not compromise His humanity
Is His humanity compromised by hypostatic union in virgin birth?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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shamwari
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# 15556
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Posted
The trouble is Martin that your reply ( as with all the Creeds ) is informed by Greek philosophical concepts many of which are dated.
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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