Sunday, February 08, 2004
Why you can't read the Bible literally
"Most heirs of the Reformation, not least Evangelicals, take it for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’….
…I find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this sort or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, thought there is more than a a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition, as opposed to Catholic or rationalist ones."
from N T Wright, How can the Bible be Authoritative?
(The Laing Lecture 1989, and the Griffith Thomas Lecture 1989)
Christians in a Consumer Culture
Found this on Scott's blog. Good stuff:
Ways to be Christian in a consumer culture:
Live simply
Give without expecting return
View others as intrinsically significant; view them as important for who they are, not for what they can do or for what they have
Slow down
Critique bigger-better-faster-more
Be skeptical of marketing
Be captured by mystery and wonder
Think long-term
Find fulfillment in relationships and service
Create space for silence, stillness, and rest
(For the record, try to compile such a list without utilizing economic metaphors like "value" and "worth". That alone should highlight the challenge that we face.) |