There’s the crux. It becomes a matter of trust in the Spirit’s guidance in those 'uncharted waters '. We prefer to have control instead and to see where we’re going before we get there. Hence our nearly universal preference for pretending that we’ve ‘decoded the Bible’ and thus gained some sort of inside track over everybody else about the specificity of the Spirit’s plans.
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I don’t think so, since Philemon is a personal letter which has little or no value in evaluating doctrine.
Notice how weak the term “may allude” is? That is really a grasp for at a straw by the source. I have seen that before.
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Ah, full and complete agreement!
Those teachings would stand and do stand and they are the hope for the world!
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I have seen what you are describing as well. Science and evolution in particular is seen as an existential. threat to many in the church who may have been on the fence before, but now are doubling down when they feel threatened. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not, or bad theology or not, only that the lion is at the door, and the door must be barricaded.
They see the polls about science being a leading reason that people are leaving the church, and rather than wondering how the church caused the situation to develop, instead seek to eliminate science. It is like putting whiteout on the computer screen rather than correcting the problem,
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This is such a remarkable statement from Calvin
For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.
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It’s a high bar. And yet the lowliest are the ones who most easily pass it.
It’s also making more sense to me now to think of truth as ‘being a person’ (as it is Christ) rather than a statement. Or even a collection of right answers that somebody utters. I’ve seen during job interviews how a person’s demeanor and expression seem to matter almost more than the actual words uttered. I.e. one candidate can give some “right answers” that everybody likes to hear and yet we all agree at the end that they are not a good match for the position, while another candidate can stumble as far as content goes, and yet the interviewers feel really positively about them after the interaction.
So it’s making more sense to me in this time of life that not only is it not ‘what you know’ or ‘who all you know’ so much as it is … ‘how you do life.’
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I like that
It’s a judgment call so often. What gets me is when you have those who are always learning and not able to come to an understanding of the truth. They do exist out there, and yet it is not always so easy to judge who is who. In time, especially after you hire someone and get to know them, you can tell whether that hunch you had was right.
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Part of what I mean by “uncharted waters” is figuring out how to thrive spiritually in current of church culture and even doctrine one is swimming against.
I could say more, but will refrain. Many of you understand where I’m at.
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It seems the same dynamic is present regarding how churches see any threat that has been used to protect the institutional integrity of their institutions during the sexual abuse scandals. Due to the lack of scrutiny and legal demands, there is little pressure to abandon those tactics in the face of other injustices.
Perhaps I need to work a bit harder in finding peace in the face of disillusionment.
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Do you have mostly your own specific church community in mind, or the wider ‘church-at-large’? Or bits of both?
It makes a difference. One can be disillusioned with the wider church and its loudest mouth pieces while still managing to make a decent spiritual home in the community you’re in. But if Sunday morning is too often war-time for you, then … well, that would be quite difficult to sustain indeed!
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I recall reading some material by Metzger, but I think the first edition of that work came out some time after I finished grad school – so it goes on my list . . . .
Eusebius considered the Apocalypse of Peter spurious but included 2 Peter as disputed.
I find it interesting that in the early centuries different Christians had different canons but they didn’t really argue about it. I think they had a less binary concept of inspiration and thus of canonicity.
Church history would have a lot fewer flakes with bizarre teachings if the West had the same canon as the Nestorians! Revelation has spawned more strange ideas than any other book, possibly more than all the others combined. Indeed it only made the canon in the West because Christians in the Roman empire read it and saw what it talked about happening around them; east of Roman lands it wasn’t seen as relevant to much of anything.
And Origen set out seven levels of inspiration, connected to seven different meaning of the term “the word of God”. We’ve made the whole business quite binary.
It has to be kept in mind that the word doesn’t necessarily indicate a single event but could include a writer’s whole life; also that it does not mean dictation or any idea that the writer was just a tool who had to go back and read what he had put on papyrus in order to know what it said. So even if the word is taken literally, it doesn’t mean that the words themselves were chosen by God, only that the message was approved.
That certainly was the case right up until the Council of Trent when the Roman Catholic church made the matter of the canon completely binary, declaring that a writing was either in or out. People pounce on Luther for dissing James (which is unfair actually since later he praised it as a worthy book), but he was just engaging in something common among Bible scholars, stating his thoughts on a book; there were more than a few Roman Catholic bishops, theologians, and even Cardinals who made similar statements – some didn’t like James, some thought 2 & 3 John useless, some declared John’s Apocalypse to not be inspired, some even disputed Hebrews.
And none of them were censured for voicing their judgments.
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In some of my university physics courses we used a text written by the professor. It was in its second edition, and the professor told us there were around two hundred errors, which was a lower number than the first edition had had! But it was a text used widely in universities, which says that it was considered authoritative.
You’re using two different definitions of a word, the fallacy of equivocation.
Which is what the church Fathers tended to do.
And barricading gets done with whatever seems to be available, no validating the source necessary.
And not asking if it is science that is the problem or how people fail to understand science.
I spent eight years feeling that about me and the first Creation story.
I saw a book about this a while back that addressed how grace is tossed so easily in the trash when it comes to hot-button issues, how easily churches just absorb the world’s view of something and don’t realize they’re harming the Gospel.
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Yes, it was an overstatement to say Eusebius called it a forgery. He did say 2 Peter did not belong in the canon and that he only knew the first epistle to be genuine.
“1. One epistle of Peter, that called the first, is acknowledged as genuine. And this the ancient elders used freely in their own writings as an undisputed work. But we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon; yet, as it has appeared profitable to many, it has been used with the other Scriptures.
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The so-called Acts of Peter, however, and the Gospel which bears his name, and the Preaching and the Apocalypse, as they are called, we know have not been universally accepted, because no ecclesiastical writer, ancient or modern, has made use of testimonies drawn from them.
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But in the course of my history I shall be careful to show, in addition to the official succession, what ecclesiastical writers have from time to time made use of any of the disputed works, and what they have said in regard to the canonical and accepted writings, as well as in regard to those which are not of this class.
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Such are the writings that bear the name of Peter, only one of which I know to be genuine and acknowledged by the ancient elders.”
Excerpt From
The History of the Church
Eusebius of Caesarea
This material may be protected by copyright.
Still, the most compelling evidence for me is that no early church leader mentioned or quoted from 2 Peter for more than 100 years after the death of Peter. Around 200 or so, Hippolytus of Rome mentioned it, not as scripture, and that is the earliest mention we have!
Much of it seems so general that I can’t decide whether that should make it more likely to be quoted or the opposite. The part about faith, virtue, etc. seems eminently quotable!
I think what strikes me most when reading it is 2:4 where a reference to Tartarus is made. I can’t help but wonder where a Galilean fisherman would have known the word from, and I can put together an argument either way.
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I agree with this! I would encourage people not to think that everyone thinks like people who speak the loudest.
I found the podcast very encouraging. I share similar views about the Bible. And, yes we can take the Bible very seriously as a reliable way to know who Jesus is.
I will add @jstump 's book to my reading list.
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One my favorite living theologians is Tremper Longman. I especially like the series of commetaries he has edited, The Story of God Bible Commentary. It’s a true gift for how these conservative evangelical theologians labor ever so diligently in the text. I can also sympathize with the liberal view, but I continue to imagine and personally feel the Bible is the inspired book providentially given to the people of God.
With all certainty, this is something reasonable people can disagree about and I suppose it will remain that way until Jesus returns.
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