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 from 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

Monday, August 18, 2014

Scot McKnight's Review of "Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy," Part 5 - John Franke




There is little doubt that the inerrancy of the Bible is a current and often contentious topic among evangelicals. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy represents a timely contribution by showcasing the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy, facilitating understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge.

Each essay in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy considers:

  • the present context and the viability and relevance for the contemporary evangelical Christian witness;
  • whether and to what extent Scripture teaches its own inerrancy;
  • the position’s assumed/implied understandings of the nature of Scripture, God, and truth; and
  • three difficult biblical texts, one that concerns intra-canonical contradictions, one that raises questions of theological plurality, and one that concerns historicity.

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy serves not only as a single-volume resource for surveying the current debate, but also as a catalyst both for understanding and advancing the conversation further. Contributors include Al Mohler, Kevin Vanhoozer, Michael Bird, Peter Enns, and John Franke.


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Scott McKnight begins a discussion of Inerrancy to which I will add
occasional emendation, notes, links, and resources. R.E. Slater, August 4, 2014


Mission, Pluralism, and Inerrancy
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/08/18/mission-pluralism-and-inerrancy/

by Scot McKnight
Aug 18, 2014
Comments

John Franke
In the final essay in Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy, John Franke reframes inerrancy through the theological grids of Trinitarian mission and epistemic pluralism. He begins where many have begun, and when I say “many” I mean many people who have said things to me and who have said so in writing (including John himself), that inerrancy’s ideal is good but its use has become problematic. Namely, it is too often:

(1) assumed in meaning, and
(2) used as a theological divider on the basis of
the assumed meaning, and
(3) it has caused way too much division.

He says it has become a “theological and political symbol” (260) and I agree. To be sure, abuse does not determine meaning until abuse gets too closely allied with meaning, and many of us think the latter line has been crossed. (More of that on Wednesday.)

Franke rightly observes that one can say inerrancy is the church’s tradition if one means the Bible is true and trustworthy, and if (a big IF) one accepts non-literal (non-historical) figurative, theological readings of the Bible. Franke sees the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy as an example of “classic or strong foundationalism” (261). That is, it seeks a “universal and indubitable basis for human knowledge” (261).

We are then dealing with a term (inerrancy) shaped by Enlightenment modernity. So whatever the Bible says is true (foundation) and any chink in the armor destroys the whole. Foundationalism leads to fallibilism, that is, humans are fallible and absolute certainty is impossible. He thinks the CSBI, perhaps unwittingly, is committed to classic foundationalism. Since most evangelicals are weak foundationalists he asks what inerrancy would look like in a fallibilist perspective.

Inerrancy for Franke is second-order, a construction built on biblical texts but not asserted in biblical texts (263). Article 13 of CSBI opens up the possibility of the Bible’s affirmations to be conditioned upon context (264). But Article 12 may back off from that kind of interpretive logic.

He thinks CSBI is too caught up in classical foundationalism so he offers a different model:

1. The God of Scripture: God is God (and we are not), God is living and active, God is love, God is missional, and God is plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality.

2. Divine accommodation, Truth and Scripture: we are not God; there is an infinite qualitative distinction between us and God. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. So God accommodates to us in revealing truth to us. Language is not divinization; language partakes of human limitations. Scripture then is a “map” (268). God is light but God’s light is beyond any light we know. God is Truth; Scripture can only be truth. By inspiration they become true and faithful. By God’s grace we can know God truly.

Therefore, inerrancy fits in the “truth” aspect of God’s Truth. It is limited to language’s own limitations. “inerrancy functions only within the limits of language alone” (270).

3. Spirit: the act of revelation, then the Spirit witness to revelation, and then the Spirit-guided comprehension of the witness to God’s true revelation (270). Hence, Word and Spirit must be bound together. Spirit speaks through the Scripture but exegesis cannot exhaust Spirit.

The Scripture creates world through the Spirit as God wills that world. The most real world is the eschatological reality of the kingdom. God’s mission and love are fundamental to truth as well.

For Franke it is important to emphasize diversity and plurality in God’s revelation. The Bible is polyphonic. Four Gospels, not one. Not in the sense of relativism but in the sense of multiple approaches to the one true gospel. This entails unity in the canon. Canon bounds the diversities into the unity.

4. Inerrancy: “Scripture is inerrant in its witness to the plurality of perspectives that are indispensable to the practice of missional Christian community” (276). It means all texts must be given their place at the table, but it also means no text is allowed to force others to conform to it. Scripture therefore creates an open and flexible tradition. It also works against a single universal systematics.

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In this chapter we see the first real impact of postmodernity’s chastened epistemology (Lesslie Newbigin style) on both the nature of Scripture, which Franke mediates through the big themes of Karl Barth’s view of Scripture, and the extent of our own interpretations. I’m not afraid to put words in Franke’s mouth: postmodernity’s perception of the human condition of knowing has to impact both our view of Scripture and our own articulations of theology. That is, they are limited and contextually shaped. I don’t see this in any of the other essays. I value what Franke is pointing us to consider in this regard.

On Joshua 6… he tips his hat to the core historicity (“essential”), notes the possible enlargement of the story in terms of myth (in accordance with usage of James Hoffmeier and Kenneth Kitchen, whose evangelical credentials are unquestioned)… but moves into the essential aim of Scripture: not to give these kinds of details but to form people into God’s mission. He thinks the Acts passages are not that important but does see canonical pluralism in the contrast of Deuteronomy and the words of Jesus about violence in Matthew 5.

Franke gets some serious pushback — from Mohler, Bird and Vanhoozer. Mohler for changing the whole idea of inerrancy, Bird for his incarnation analogy (I don’t see the problem here that Bird sees, as long as one doesn’t see it so much ontologically but analogically), and for the distinction of Truth from truth, and for having a pragmatic orientation to Scripture. Vanhoozer is concerned with Franke’s critique of foundationalism and for his lack of clarity on the meaning of inerrancy vs. the abuses of inerrancy. [I could wish Kevin would acknowledge how much negative impact the misuse of inerrancy has had on the meaning of the term where it has become as much a hermeneutical identity today as a statement about the power of Scripture to tell God's truth.] He also pushes against fallibilism, which he thinks Franke connects too much to interpretations. He wants to know about Franke’s view of “sound doctrine.”


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Addendum by R.E. Slater

Just a quick here... Franke's view pretty much dovetails with my own analysis in "Part 4 - Keven Vanhoozer" in that it is beginning to parse the evangelical tradition for its uses of inerrancy as a standard for Christian brotherhood which is discriminate to its naive views of biblical interpretation.

I also have noted Scot's omission of Peter Enns name in his final paragraph above. Namely, if we were to assume - as I have here in my addendums - that like myself, Peter would have very little negative reaction to John Franke's published statements. Who personally would be more in agreement with Franke's positive statements than disagreements on the whole.

Finally, I will attempt a final wrap of this subject from the perspective of postmodern doubt and skepticism. It may help lend a more rounded frame of discussion towards late-modernity's epistemic certainty and related unnecessary dogmas placed upon the texts of Scripture. Overall, it would be better to not necessitate a position of inerrancy than it would be to hold to its many layered positive affirmations and denials.

R.E. Slater
August 18, 2014