Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Saturday, May 19, 2012

N.T. Wright, Scripture & the Authority of God - "Enlightenment, Postmodernism, and Misreading Scripture"





N.T. Wright on the Enlightenment, postmodernism, and common misreadings of scripture
May 14, 2012

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to continue series on learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be.

As part of the series, we’re working our way through several books, and have already discussed The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. Up next up is Inspiration and Incarnation, by Peter Enns. But currently, we’re discussing Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright, and today I want to address Chapter 6, entitled “The Challenge of the Enlightenment,” and Chapter 7, entitled, “Misreadings of Scripture.”

Chapter 6

I confess I checked-out few times while plowing through Chapter 6, which explores the effect of the Enlightenment on biblical interpretation and scriptural authority. Because this is just the sort of stuff you bring up at parties to make friends.

Here Wright notes that “much of what has been written about the Bible in the last two hundred years has either been following through the Enlightenment’s program, or reacting to it, or negotiating some kind of halfway house in between.” And so Christians need to be aware of which Enlightenment assertions “must be politely denied, which of its challenges may be taken up and by what means, and which of its accomplishments must be welcomed and enhanced.”

Without casting Enlightenment rationalism as categorically evil, Wright details some of the problematic consequences of Enlightenment assumptions regarding the biblical text:

  • false claims to absolute objectivity,
  • the elevation of “reason” (“not as an insistence that exegesis must make sense with an overall view of God and the wider world,” Wright notes, “but as a separate ‘source’ in its own right”),
  • reductive and skeptical readings of scripture that cast Christianity as out-of-date and irrelevant,
  • a human-based eschatology that fosters a “we-know-better-now” attitude toward the text,
  • a reframing of the problem of evil as a mere failure to be rational,
  • the reduction of the act of God in Jesus Christ to a mere moral teacher, etc.

Wright then discusses how the rise of historical biblical scholarship has both helped and hurt the Church, arguing for something of a middle-way between anti-intellectualism on the one hand and the glorification of it on the other.

According to Wright, “to affirm ‘the authority of scripture’ is precisely not to say, ‘We know what scripture means and don’t need to raise any more questions. It is always a way of saying that the church in each generation must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand scripture more fully and live by it more thoroughly, even if that means cutting across cherished traditions.”

And I especially like this:

“Not all who try to follow the Bible in detail - as well as [in broad] outline - are fundamentalists,” says Wright, “nor are they all guilty of those cultural, intellectual, and moral failings which North American (and other) liberals perceive in North American (and other) conservatives.

Equally, not all who question some elements of New Testament teaching, or its applicability to the present day, are ‘liberals’ in the sense pejoratively intended by North American conservatives or traditionalists.”

Wright urges Christians to avoid plugging their ears and refusing to acknowledge the insights that can be gleaned from historical criticism on the one hand, and accepting historical criticism wholesale on the other.

“There is a great gulf fixed between those who want to prove the historicity of everything reported in the Bible in order to demonstrate that the Bible is ‘true after all, and those who, committed to living under the authority of scripture, remain open to what scripture itself actually teaches and emphasizes,” he says.

As the chapter continues, Wright tackles postmodern scholarship, which he believes has offered some helpful critiques of Enlightenment assumptions while providing useful analyses of how certain texts might be received by particular groups, but which tends to veer into the complete dismissal of large portions of the biblical text.

And so Wright sees postmodernity’s effect on contemporary Western readings of Scripture as “essentially negative.”

“Postmodernity agress with modernity in scorning both the eschatological claim of Christianity and its solution to the problem of evil, but without putting any alternatives in place,” he says. “ All we can do with the Bible, if postmodernity is left in charge, is to play with such texts as give us pleasure, and issue warnings against those that give pain to ourselves or to others who attract our (usually selective) sympathy.”

Wright’s solution is “a narratival and critical realist reading of scripture,” which he doesn’t flesh out in this chapter, but will in future ones...which is good, seeing as how I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

Chapter 7

[This] gets a little more interesting because Wright lists common misreading of Scripture—by the religious right and the religious left.

His list of misreadings on the right includes:

- the rapture

- the prosperity gospel

- the support of slavery (so I guess he’s referring to readings both past and present)

- undifferentiated reading of the Old and New Testament

- an arbitrary pick-and-choose approach to Scripture, complete with an implicit canon-within-the-canon, which, for example, is tough on sexual offenses but says nothing about the regular biblical prohibitions against usury

- support of the death penalty

- “discovery of ‘religious’ meanings and exclusion of ‘political’ ones, thus often tacitly supporting the social status quo”

- readings of Paul that leave out the Jewish dimension through which his letters make the most sense

- attempted “biblical” support for the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of scriptural prophesy - an overall failure to pay attention to context and hermeneutics....

[I can think of plenty more, starting with the idea that the Bible presents us with a singular picture of “biblical womanhood” that more closely resembles the June Cleaver culture of pre-feminist America than the familial norms of biblical times - not that I’m biased on that one or anything. :-) ]

His list of misreading on the left includes:

- claims to objective or neutral readings of the text

- claims that modern history/science “disprove” the Bible or render it irrelevant or unbelievable

- the cultural relativity argument which assumes that “the Bible is an old book from a different culture, so we can’t take it seriously in the modern world.”

- caricaturing biblical teaching on some topics in order to be able to set aside its teaching on other topics

- “discovery of ‘political’ meanings to the exclusion of ‘religious’ ones” [a reverse of the right's misreading]

- the proposal that the New Testament used the Old Testament in an arbitrary and unwarranted fashion

- the claim that New Testament writers did not think they were writing ‘scripture,’ so appealing to their work does them violence

- “a skin-deep-only appeal to ‘contextual readings,’ as though by murmuring the magic word ‘context’ one is allowed ot hold the meaning and relevance of the text at arm’s length."

- reducing “truth” to scientific statements on the one hand, or to deconstruct it altogether on the other.

Wright believes a critical realist reading of the text is something of a third way between two extremes, one that can “take the postmodern critique fully on board and still come back with a strong case for a genuinely historical understanding.”

He argues that we do have serious and academic methods by which we can “say definitively that some readings of ancient texts are historically preferable to others,” and that those should be employed thoughtfully and humbly by the Church.

In chapter eight, “How to Get Back on Track,” Wright will propose a five-part recommendation for approaching scripture today.

Good.

It's all getting a little theoretical to me.


* * * * * * * * * * * *


So, did any of that make sense to you?

What do you think of Wright’s assessment of the Enlightenment and of postmodernism?

What would you add to the list of biblical misreadings—on either the right or left?


* * * * * * * * * * * *


continue to -

N.T. Wright, Scripture & the Authority of God

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