Boy, I sure do love this blog as a forum for sharing my thoughts and engaging in dialogue with those who know me, to greater or lesser degrees.
Thanks to all who comment and share and laugh and cry and make this a space where I feel good about sharing things of depth and significance to me.
I've been struggling, as of recently, with this 'church governance' paper that I'm working on for school and it is kicking my butt. But there is hope. I am convinced of it.
I found a great quote by an Anglican dude in the midst of a debate about New Testament church polity that struck me as being absolutely phenomenal. I'm not an Anglican, nor do I think that an 'episcopalian' form of church, like Anglican, is the best.
This is still a frickn' good quote:
"So often the claim of sola scriptura is in reality this: the Bible as interpreted by me, or by my group, or by the leaders of my group, or by a small part of the whole church during one specific period of history and in a certain cultural context, or by my denomination, or by this or that school of thought." ~ Peter Toon in Who runs the Church?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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8 comments:
Have you read any N.T. Wright? He's another Anglican dude. That quote got me thinking about his little book, "The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars Towards a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture". It was an interesting read (and, incidentally, he wasn't all that happy with the North American title for the book).
Another N.T. Wright piece that's totally worth the read is an article entitled "How Can the Bible Be Authoritative." You can find it online for free.
Plus, how sweet is it that a Bible scholar has the same initials as the New Testament?
I concur with the last two voices, N.T. Wright blows my mind. Not only does he write great stuff for lay readers, but he is one of the most critical-minded Christian scholars I have come across. Maybe even more so than Borg (and less heretical hahaha). Actually N.T. Wright wrote a book with Borg which blew my mind called "The Meaning of Jesus" you can borrow it if you want. The chapter on the resurrection and the one on whether or not Jesus believed he was the messiah were frickin intense.
It is true, we shouldn't be elitists when it comes to the biblical texts. While having good teachers who know Greek and Hebrew and do good exegesis is handy dandy. We should never sacrifice the texts meaning for the individual and how it relates to their condition as a human. That is what makes it an interesting book, the numerous forms and meanings it takes amongst the various readers and interpreters. Though in constructing doctrine... I'll leave that to the theologians. hahaha
You know what, I haven't read ANYTHING by N.T. Wright...but I would like to, at some point, that book with Borg being high on the list.
NT Wright? More like NT freakin' idiot.
I just had to disagree, don't want old Tommy boy getting a large head.
Simply Christians a good book also.
In fact, I believe The Last Word is an expanded version of "How Can the Bible Be Authoritative".
That article can be found here.
Check out the N.T. Wright Page---full of resources.
I second San Gregorio's mention of Simply Christian. Simply amazing.
Pernell Goodyear's also got a great thought about Scripture - this time in the context of "Daily Bible reading" and discipleship. You know how often you hear from various preachers that discipleship is down in church because only 21% of people do daily Bible readings? This is kind of like that. www.pernellgoodyear.com (march 6). Great post.
Thanks Amie, I read that article and I must say, it was awesome.
When I was working at an inner-city ministry one of the other girls volunteering said it's good to ask the people if they have a Bible and also if they read it.
I commented that, honestly, most people in churches don't read their Bible (which is certainly true, and a symptom of a bigger problem when we do have the Bible but see little value in it). Her response was, "But if you don't read the Bible you can't grow!"
I thought about the exact same stuff that guy was thinking about and laughed to myself. I know her heart, but yeah, just reading the Bible will not make you a disciple.
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