"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
> From: george murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
>
>
>
> > I'm the first to admit that there are difficult
> questions involved
> > with the idea of the inspiration of scripture. But the
> idea that the Bible
> > is a "thoroughly human testimony" means, first, that there
> is no way to
> > distinguish between the canon of scripture and other
> writings so, so that
> > not only the Gospel of Thomas (as with the Jesus Seminar)
> but a whole
> > variety of apocryphal texts, gnostic documents &c have as
> much claim to be
> > "thoroughly human testimony to the authentic human
> experience of the
> > presence of the Sacred" as anything in the NT - & from
> there anything goes.
>
>
> As George correctly notes below, I'm not advocating an "anything goes"
> strategy. I am, however, advocating that religious communities develop
> the candor and courage to say, "We take full responsibility for
> selecting the contributions to our community-defining canon in the
> manner of our own choosing, a manner that we find to be consistent
> with our experience of the Sacred and with mature our communal
> judgment in regard to who we are and what heritage we represent.
>
>
> > N.B. I am NOT saying that for Howard "anything
> goes" but there is
> > nothing here to keep one from going off in any direction
> one's experience
> > seems to take one. One purpose of a doctrine of
> inspiration & a canon of
> > scripture is to provide some boundaries.
>
>
> If I were a bit more cynical I might suggest that another function of
> a doctrine of inspiration is to fend off all criticism of the canon
> once it has been put in place (by various historic councils and
> ecclesiastical decisions). The result, however, is a tendency for a
> religious community to stagnate in its conceptual vocabulary and
> theological constructs. Those members of a community who dare to
> challenge some portion of the canon, or even some doctrinal
> proposition crafted to protect the canon from criticism, are subject
> to all manner of, shall we say, "sometimes less than polite" criticism
> or rejection by a community. Tickets for guilt trips are freely
> dispensed to the critics.
& I, being pretty cynical, think that the reason some people
want to get rid of the ideas of inspiration & canon is because they
prefer a cafeteria style approach to religion with which a canon that is
in any sense authoritative doesn't fitl.
Having said that - sure, the church is an institution of human
beings who are tempted to use scripture to defend the status quo. It's
significant though that the primary challenge to such a tendency, the
Reformation of the 16th century, was based on an appeal to scripture
against those who thought that the church had other sources of
authority.
The primary concern is not challenges to the boundaries of the
canon itself: Luther's opinions about James or Revelation & differences
about the status of the Apocrypha, e.g., don't really matter very much.
What is of greater concern is core teachings of the church - Christ,
justification, Trinity, &c. If there is no canon then one can invoke
any texts or "experiences" one wishes on the same level as John or
Romans.
Appeal to "our experience of the Sacred" can be disastrous.
That's just what the Deutsche Christen did - & if there is no canon, who
is to deny them the sacredness of Blut und Boden?
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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